The challenge: Philip’s application video

***Please note: Case Studies may refer to See Together Media, Rheanna’s former business alias.***

Philip came to us with a big challenge: make an application video, under 2 minutes, that would help him get into Singularity University’s prestigious and competitive Global Solutions Program. The program unites the world’s brightest and most innovative young minds to tackle “the greatest challenges facing humanity” (right from their website). Whoa. Each year only 80 applicants are selected from around 3,000. After meeting Philip we knew that a) he’s brilliant b) this program could help him advance all of the innovative surgical technologies he’s developing and c) that could help save many lives. Already he had invented some pretty amazing stuff and he believed this program would be a stepping stone to something greater. We were starting to feel the pressure and knew there was only one way this could go down… Philip was getting into that program.

The Approach

A video wasn’t an essential piece of the GSP application, but Philip recognized video’s power to show the panelists exactly who he is. We agreed – this way his passion could jump right off the screen. Philip gave us a script with all of the points he wanted to hit. From this we chose to develop a series of interview questions that would prompt similar responses. Our goal was to make the video feel more conversational and natural, which would show the panelists Philip’s sincerity and enthusiasm. Because of the tight time limit, and the quantity of information we wanted to deliver, we ended up blending Philip’s script and the dialogue we prompted to create a tightly packaged video that hit all of the points Philip requested and more.

The Result

Helping Philip go after such a deeply personal and challenging goal was a call to why we do what we do. Even after the video was completed we waited in anticipation for the final verdict. We were nervous for him! When he told us he was accepted, we were elated. The video was a great addition to his application and surely made him stand out. We were able to maximize his budget by tweaking the same video and taking out the references to GSP to create an introduction video for his website, which will come in handy when he markets himself in the future.

Hear what Philip has to say about working with us.