Case Study
Audience documentary & workshop
audience documentary
What is an audience documentary?
Storytelling is the only empathy engine we have. Narrative can translate dense research into shared understanding.
The audience documentary packs 100+ hours of research into a 20-minute film that teams will actually use and enjoy.
the Challenge
The brand team had surveys and dashboards, but lacked a single, company-wide point of view on whose problem they were solving.
The Approach
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Recruiting emerging artists with 5K+ followers on Instagram, screening 12 people to identify the most typical persona who could represent the full cohort.
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Creating a story arc that gave the artist enough structure to share insights and enough freedom to reveal context.
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Day-in-life shooting. Sit-down interviews and mission-based filming. We followed the main character preparing for and performing the last show of his first tour.
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Teams discussed artist challenges explored in the film and developed brand solutions anchored in specific persona needs.
The Process
After interviews, we narrowed the screening and recruitment to three typical customer representatives. We asked them to identify who could represent the cohort's mindset.
Cam the Artisan (6K IG followers / 8K weekly Spotify streams) became the main character: a typical creator in extraordinary conditions. We embedded with emerging artists, filming daily life across touring, travel, downtime, and performance.
PRODUCTION
Insights identified what the production team had to capture. The team designed occasions for these insights to emerge organically. Day-in-life routine exposed mundane creator life. We filmed the artist's last show of his first tour.
Sit-down interviews invited creators to share challenges and struggles.
Unprompted conversation revealed how decisions were made under real constraints.
Cross interviews revealed what the artist wanted to hide.
We assembled these observations into an 18-minute documentary.
The Impact
The final workshop functioned like a book club for the documentary. The documentary created a common point of reference. Teams could see the same people, pressures, and trade-offs, and argue from shared reality instead of interpretation. Audience understanding shifted from theoretical to lived, giving strategy, content, and cultural decisions a grounded starting point.