Alicia’s Story

Creative Director. The strategic bet was singular rather than plural: one person, specific, unflattened, instead of a mosaic of faces standing in for a month. From there it was portrait direction on set, an interview built from a discussion guide written to draw out her own words, and the media build-out across 300×500 display, 728×90 banners, 4.75×8 and 8.5×11 print, from locked source with two caption versions.

The interview was designed as a toolkit asset, so TD could run it in internal communications as readily as external ones.

Posed and lit on the stage. The performers came from the centre — a dancer, and a poet who worked in movement.

Shot the same day, same stage, one source. The dancer is from the centre TD supports, not a booked model.

I owned the interview end to end — the discussion guide, the question structure, and the interview itself, which I conducted on set with Alicia Rose, TD’s AVP of Social Impact. That conversation is the campaign. Everything else is built on what she said in it.

The performers were not cast models. They came from the arts centre the programme funds, which is the whole argument the campaign is making — the money goes somewhere, and these are the people it reaches.

I worked with Kristin Smith-Clinton on the strategy behind the single-portrait bet, and set the campaign creative with her. James “JT” Thigpen directed and art-directed the shoot.