Diary of the Craft - GLOBAL Content Series
The question that shaped this project is how to localize a global brand and attract a broader range of customers, essentially how to put a face to a faceless brand of 6500 hotels. The Diary of the Craft content series elevates a wide range of compelling culinary and beverage artist stories from the field.
The project needed a formal concept, strategy, brand identity, visual direction, production approach, communication and legal strategy. And it needed someone to lead the production of the series. That’s where I came in. In many ways, I feel like my entire career had been preparing me for a project like this. Global scale, stakeholders in every region, endless possibilities. Like every project there were challenges, but the pros outweighed the cons.
Once I completed developing the project strategy and foundational materials, I travelled with a skeleton crew to 11 locations around the globe to meet and interview some great culinary and beverage talent. This content series features both video and photography and showcases some of the most intriguing Marriott International talent who represent the new breed of artists needed to craft compelling guest experiences.
Creative/Art Direction, Executive Production & Design: Natalie Lee
External Photo & Video Crew from Multiple Shoots includes: Kate Noonan, Roberta Hill Thomas, ITCHBAN, Of Two Lands, Sal D’Alia, Kyle Johnston, Cole Wiley, Dom DeLeon, Ashton Witt, Christine Kelly, Jorge Gomez, Carla Taylor, Megan Galehouse, Sarina Benn, Giacomo Lampariello, Fernando Viquez, and Dennis Haden
MARRIOTT GLOBAL SUPPLIER CAMPAIGN
Differences Welcome
To remain relevant, the Marriott Global Supplier Diversity Program needed to inspire and engage its stakeholders more effectively. The team wanted to explore new brand names, reexamine their mission and overall goals, learn more about their stakeholders, discuss brand perception challenges and brainstorm new and effective ways to communicate and engage with a wide range of stakeholders.
For this project, I led the Creative team to rebrand the program and develop a marketing campaign series that featured a print ad series; a promotional video; brand identity guidelines and supportive design elements; and a library of design templates and resources.
Creative, Art Direction & Design: Natalie Lee
Creative Copywriting: Kate Noonan
Photography: Brendan Medairy
Video Design & Production: The Garden
MAKING HISTORY 101 EVENT SERIES
Early in my career, I was selected by the United Nations Association of the National Capital Area (UNA-NCA) and the ONE Campaign to concept, plan, develop and produce an event that highlighted the United Nation’s Millennium Development Goals in Washington DC. Honestly, I had no idea what I was signing up for, but I was very passionate about the topics and the causes that the event would be addressing. The first thing that I did was to meet with the UNA-NCA Board to figure out what resources that I had access to…I quickly learned that people who work and volunteer in the non-profit space are considered miracle workers for good reason. Limited to no budget and or resources make any task difficult at best and seemingly impossible at worst. After, partnering with a couple super talented miracle workers from UNA-NCA and The ONE Campaign, I was able to assemble a team of volunteers to help establish an effective planning strategy, and coordinate event venues, speakers, corporate and non-profit sponsors and attendees!
From a creative perspective, building the brand and concept was also a bit tricky. I wanted to create something that would be the perfect mix of education and action. I defined the challenge as: how to make a big challenge, like ending global poverty, appear smaller and more manageable and target audiences like college students and young professionals. The idea was to present several approaches for the audience to choose from on how they, personally, could contribute to ending poverty (i.e. education, volunteerism, financial donations, and/or socially responsible consumerism).
The final result was a successful event series that ran for 2 years, called Making History 101 (MH101).
Creative Copywriting, Art Direction, Executive Production & Design: Natalie Lee
Pre-planning, Outreach, Production and Onsite Support: UNANCA Volunteer Team
Photography: The Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) team
THERE’S MORE
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