Terry Honoree Video Process

Creating a pathway to tell a Terry story.

Summer 2026

Photo from the 2026 Terry College of Business Alumni Gala

Project Overview

Every year the Terry College of Business honors three alumni for their distinctive careers, professional achievements and philanthropic work. As part of that honor, they are featured in a 5–7 minute video shown at the Annual Alumni Gala and a Terry Alumni Magazine feature story. These videos are large productions requiring several days of shooting interviews and b-roll on location with very high production values. They require a tremendous effort and dedication from both the creators and the subjects.

Having worked on these videos for a few years now, I knew the struggles involved in creating them. I wanted to create processes and tools to make telling the honoree’s stories easier for both the subject and the Office of Marketing and Communications creative team. I needed a communications plan and a way to convey the partnership needed between the OMC creative team and the honorees to properly tell their story.

The Problem

A view of my inbox while trying to schedule with an honoree.

The pain points for these video projects revolve around scheduling, communications and getting buy in from the subject. It’s a lot of work to create these videos and we need the subjects to devote several days to telling their story. We typically feature three alumni, two distinguished alumni at the end of their career or in retirement already and a young alum who has shown tremendous success early in their career.

The distinguished alumni can be well into retirement with children spread across the country. They might have moved away from the place where they grew their career, making it difficult to tell their professional story.

The young alumni are often extremely busy. They might have young families and little time for hobbies outside of work and even less time for a video crew to invade their lives. It can be difficult to find dedicated time to capture their very full lives.

All of these subjects, and their supporting interview subjects are extremely busy and likely not used to having a video crew following them around or trying to have normal conversations with a microphone attached to them.

I needed to create a way to solve these issues as simply as possible. Mainly, I need the subjects to understand what a good relationship looks like, the kinds of things we would like to capture, the moments in their lives we want to highlight and the importance of keeping in contact and on schedule to ensure the videos are made in time for the annual gala in the spring.

The Solution

The solution to these problems would be developed using a process to ensure the customer (in this case the honorees) would always be the center focus. The goal after all is to tell their story.

To begin, I developed basic customer profiles and a customer journey map. The journey covers three stages mapping the entire communications process. It covers initial contact, pre-production and post production. Each action within each stage was created for a purpose, paired with actions for the OMC creative team and the subjects. A client sentiment rounded out each step to inform the actions of the next step.

The initial stages of the journey map helped inform my decision to create a website for the honorees. The site would feature information and examples to help future honorees understand the full breadth of the process in creating their videos.

A production schedule would let them see everything needed and when we needed it. But to take it a step further, I included two real-world example schedules from previous honorees. These schedules show the jam packed 48-hours needed for the OMC creative team to have adequate footage to tell their story. A two-hour interview is just the start. We need to embed with our subjects and show the love they share for their family, a slice of the career that led to success and the hobbies and passions they pursue outside of the office. The best way to convey that is with two incredible stories and the tremendous efforts that created them.

A few simple tips for selecting interview subjects are followed by two interactive elements. The first links to a Doodle poll the honorees can use to schedule their initial call with the OMC creative team. This simple, effective tool can be used to coordinate the schedules of multiple people to find the time for a call. The second element is a link to a Photoshelter gallery where honorees can upload childhood photos and other media used to create their video.

A production checklist rounds out the webpage ensuring the honorees get one last touchpoint to know what they need to do and by when. With that final touch, the webpage was complete.

Results

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Although the true test will only come with time, I feel confident the experience journey and resulting website will provide positive results. Internally, the communications pipeline is much clearer. When the time comes, we will know what we need to ask for by when.

More importantly, the honorees will have a much better understanding of the tasks ahead of them. They have a production timeline to help understand the importance of staying on schedule. They have two examples of production schedules to show the diversity of events we want to capture. Other minor tips help ensure they know how to handle every minor detail. And lastly, two interactive tools help simplify two typical hangups. A tool for scheduling calls helps pull together a group of busy people and a tool for uploading photos and other personal media simplifies the process of getting assets from the subjects.

Although sample testing would be ideal, this project will face trial by fire in September when it is used in the actual projects. I’m truly excited to see how these processes and tools improve the projects and my quality of life while working on them.