Travel Time: Lessons Learned on the Road with Clients

As part of our series on bringing the humanity back to the digital age, we asked Creative Director Paige Galeoto about the value of traveling with clients. Here are her insights. 

I recently had the opportunity to spend four days with a client and our video/photography team shooting on location in Montana. The account is a career training college — Charter College — with 14 locations spread around the West. Over the eight years we have had this account, I have taken many of these trips, and they are valuable for so many reasons.

We pack a lot of shooting into a short period of time during these trips. After all, if we’re going to make the investment of getting the team to the campus, we want to make sure it’s time well spent. This means consecutive 14-hour days, late nights, few breaks and lots of logistics.

Spending that kind of intense time with people will quickly reveal, 1) how well you work together and, 2) how well you like each other. Fortunately, we all like each other and work well together. In my opinion, these trips have served to strengthen our bond and improve our work for the following reasons:

1. We’re doing the work together, so there’s a shared sense of accomplishment.
2. We’re problem-solving as a team in real time (no-shows, interviews that run long, unattractive shoot settings, etc.)
3. We’re gaining insight about the target audience at the same time – but often with unique takeaways that we can share.
4. We can all provide instant feedback to each other about the work, our process, and the content we’re creating.

As a parallel benefit, the time shooting our target audience provides me with invaluable insight. We typically spend an hour to an hour and a half with each student or graduate starting with small talk and make-up, then an on-camera interview and photos. During this extended period of time, I am able to learn about their lives, their dreams, their fears and what is motivating them to attend school. While I’ve interviewed dozens of these students over the years, each location and each program is different. Hearing their stories first-hand helps me create an authentic picture of the people we are talking to so that we can create marketing that resonates.

Paige Galeoto is the VP of Creative for the Estipona Group.