state farm
neighborhood sessions
State Farm produces broadcast television shows as well as on-line mini-docs for new artists.
Usher, Charlie Puth, Ben Rector, Børns, Lissie, Prince Royce, Judah and the Lion, Khaled, Lindsey Sterling, and 10 more artists...
All of the above artists were asked what it is about their neighborhood growing up made them who they are. The films then showed what the artist does in life now to give back. Except for the 45 minute Usher show all of these were two 5 minute films per artist.
CREATIVE DIRECTION, LONG FORMAT TV, SOCIAL, show running
State Farm has "Neighborhood Sessions". They are concerts that are held in an artist's hometown as a giveback. This one aired on TBS during Thanksgiving and was 45 min long.
We went down to Chattanooga TN to film Usher's Neighborhood Session show. These were the funnest assignments to work on at Translation. I'm a big music fan and it's always great to know how and why an artist got to where they are. That was are main question, "What about your neighborhood got you here?". I don't think that I was ever uninspired by an artist's story. Many times on these shoots I was amazed that I was getting paid to do this.
The project ended up getting a Shorty award.
Charlie Puth was one of our Artist Sessions in 2016. Most all of the Artist Sessions shows had 500,000 YouTube views or more bringing the total views of the program season to over 30 million viewers.
Ben Rector is from Tulsa and shooting there changed my mind about the city. It wasn't what I was expecting, it was a great place that a lot of talent is coming out of now. Ben is not only a great composer but also a top notch showman.
This was big.
Add all these up: Chris Paul, NBA All-Star Weekend, DJ Khaled, Jon Batiste, DRAM, Future, A$AP Rocky, Meek Mill... The social media views were insane.
We did a FaceBook Live concert at the NBA All Star Weekend in 2017 (the below tune in). DJ Khaled, Jon Batiste and Chris Paul hosted. Eight of the biggest current names in Hip-hop took the stage and broke Gaga's FB Live record – plus any others at the time. Snapchat was on fire and our concert was the talk of the NBA (and world) the next day. Along with DJ Khaled's millions of social followers Chris Paul has about 5 million FB plus 7 million IG followers. They were just two of 30 or more Social celebrities broadcasting that night. We got 30 times the viewers than when we did when we created shows for live TV. In some ways it might have rivaled the All-Star Game itself.