How Amway Produced a Global Video Series in 3 Months, Across 5 Countries, and Saved $100,000

“I think I speak for a lot of people in creative when I say that COVID has really changed the way we work and approach creative productions,” said Adrienne Young, the lead art director at Amway. For Young, the change became a permanent solution for the better.

Amway global headquarters is located in Michigan, and their largest markets are spread across several continents. “We say our special sauce is our Amway Business Owners (ABO). They are the unique people who are on the ground selling products and building their businesses. They're truly what helps us grow,” explained Young. Their distances became a concern when, in early 2020, Young was tasked to produce a video series showcasing ABOs in Brazil, Russia, India, Thailand, and China.

Launching a global production is a complicated project during the best of times; Young had the added hitch of doing it as COVID-19 was spreading worldwide, which restricted travel. And she had to produce a high-quality series with a small budget. However, these were just two of the challenges.

Time to stop accepting what never worked

Young wanted to capture a true representation of their global ABOs but admitted, “Sometimes when you do creative, even through big agencies in big cities, the creative would still tend to skew Western.”

Plus a large production like this was logistically complex, involving several points of contact. “We typically need to work with some larger agencies, some smaller contractors, and some independent talent,” explained Young. “Then I’d have to coordinate between our market counterparts, the ABOs and the videographer in each market, and coordinate between the videographer and the video editor. And do all this for each of the five markets. Trying to manage it all from my little office in Grand Rapids, by myself, was close to impossible.”

Young continued, “We needed to rethink the way we approached productions, including the way we build teams and engage with agencies. For us, Upwork was a great solution because we knew we could tap into talent globally and we could really truly build that hybrid team of people across the world.”

Upwork guided them through a new way of working

“We knew it was going to be really complex to have all of these video shoots and photo shoots in different markets, in different countries, different languages, and I wasn’t sure where to start,” admitted Young. “Upwork came in and helped us pull it off.”

Upwork executive account representatives aided Young in breaking down the work, identifying what skills were needed, and writing a creative brief that attracted the right talent. “From there, it started to shape up into an actual project for me, where I was like, okay, I can see us pulling this off and I don't even have to leave my office,” said Young.

Within days, Upwork connected her with Ben Tyson at Hoozens, a small video agency in Portland, Oregon. Had Young taken the usual approach of hiring a traditional agency, she’d have to send a project team out to each location. Instead, Hoozens took a cost-effective and nimble approach.

Tyson acted as the executive producer, handling all aspects of the production and process. He managed sourcing and onboarding videographers in each market, plus planning and executing interviews to ensure consistency.

Tyson explained how he achieved consistency with a global team of freelancers he had never worked with before:

“This is a nuanced story, but we had a pretty specific and ambitious visual style that we were going for. We [sent each videographer] a production pack to inspire the right questions and the right thoughts in terms of how they're going to shoot this, but without limiting their creativity. And ultimately, to get team members to really care about telling the story. ”

Young added, “I basically kicked the project off in each market and Hoozens took it from there. There was no time lost to onboarding and account management, like I’ve experienced working with large agencies.”

5 countries, 3 months, $100,000 saved

The entire project was completed in about three months—much sooner than she could through a traditional agency. Hoozens’ nimble approach not only delivered the project faster, building on-demand teams within each location also saved $20,000 per video on average.

“I'll be honest, I went in with low expectations knowing how complex the project was, and how low of a budget we had,” admitted Young. “But when the first video came out, the work spoke for itself internally.”

Source: Amway

Through Hoozens’ creative direction, they captured the voices Young wanted to amplify. “We were able to break through cultural barriers in a way we never had been able to before, and with such authenticity and quality,” said Young.

The videos connected with Amway’s global audience so deeply, that after the series launched, all of the videos generated well over 100,000 organic video views across social platforms and channels. And each ABO saw a 10% to 90% increase in their follower counts.

Source: Amway

A temporary solution becomes the way of the future

Internally, the videos “caught on like wildfire.” Young recounts being flooded with questions from stakeholders and business partners asking how she built on-demand teams and completed such a complex project without ever leaving her office.

Since then, other teams contracted Hoozens for large, global video productions and Young regularly jumps onto the Upwork platform to access help with small and large projects. “I’m starting to consider Upwork as my creative arm,” said Young. “Now we see that we can go to Upwork for exactly what we need, no matter what market the project is in, or what the scope requires. It has changed the way we get work done every day.”