Is handcrafted work still relevant in a digital age?

This month we created a film for an Alberta equine ranch. The owner requested a video of himself riding his horse around his property. We told him we needed to create a story film for him. To accomplish this, we had a personal visit to the property 150km away. We spent an afternoon getting to know the owner and his business intimately. We even rode the horses to understand what a customer experiences. Then I got to work at the drawing board, literally. I hand-illustrated a whole storyboard of the story we wanted to tell. This story would show the love and emotional connection the owner had with horses, and how that translated into his customer service.

In this fast, digital age, we rarely see handcrafted work in marketing. Text and image documents get passed around at light speed. At this frenetic pace, speed emerges as the big winner. We move tons of content in the name of mass communication. After all, content is king, right?

At Day One Media, quality content is queen. And the queen has been around a lot longer than the king. You see, to tell enduring stories that move companies to significance, you have to get your hands dirty. Whipping up docs over an expresso at a coffee shop has its place. We think though, that meeting people face to face at their place, having significant conversations and building stories frame by frame reveals what really matters. People want to be known. They believe what they are doing matters. For the world to truely discover this, you have to tell great stories. That often means going old school, and handcrafting something that matters.

If this idea resonates with you, please share what you have handcrafted lately.