Big Picture Media, Grant Street Productions
Writer/Editor, Strategist, Developer & Web Manager
2005 - ongoing
I joined the team at Hello Cool World shortly after the theatrical run of the hit documentary, The Corporation. As the grassroots campaign team behind the awardwinning film, we worked with volunteers, non-profits and activists to help promote the film and its issues, providing tools in support. (This model would be extended through multiple viral marketing & outreach campaigns, and this style of “impact campaigns” are now standard in the documentary film world.)
I began as the writer and editor of the newsletters, engaging a subscriber base of almost 100,000 people. The success of the film would continue to drive campaigns over the next two decades, and my role expanded to managing the website and later rebuilding it, first in Drupal and then WordPress. I also helped Hello Cool World become a licensed film distributor and develop a model to help fund campaigns based on sales. I worked with the company programmer to launch web stores and learned a lot about e-commerce and educational distribution along the way
Upon The Corporation’s 10 year anniversary, I worked closely with Hello Cool World Founder & Creative Director, Kat Dodds, to plan, develop and launch a crowdfunding campaign to give the film away free to 1,000 teachers. I wrote strategies, pitches, press releases, marketing materials, and more. I helped set the pages up on a new crowdfunding platform called dana.io (now gone), monitored activity and reported on donations.
We exceeded our $50,000 target and successfully gave the educationally licensed film to over 1,000 high school and universities – thanks to supporters.
The sequel, The New Corporation came out in 2019 – shortly after the pandemic, which meant pivoting to more digital and remote strategies. I built and maintained the WordPress website, managed the email marketing, and supported screenings and the development of a new event coordination platform to host them.
