THE 14TH ANNUAL SHORTY AWARDS

The Shorty Awards honor the best of social media and digital. View this season's finalists!

Industry

See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Auto See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Beauty See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Business to Business See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Consumer Brand See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Education See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Entertainment See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Financial Services See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Fitness, Health, & Wellness
<br>See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Food & Beverage
See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Gaming See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Government & Politics See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Hospitality See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Insurance See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Live Events See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> News & Media See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Non-Profit See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Pets & Animals See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Pharma & Healthcare See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Real Estate See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Restaurants See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Retail & E-Commerce See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Social Activism See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Sports See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Technology See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Television See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Travel & Tourism See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Wine, Beer & Spirits

Strategy & Engagement

See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Brand Partnership See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Call to Action See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Community Management See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Creative Use of Technology See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> CTV/OTT See previous winners and honorees for Insights and Trends here.</a> <a href=https://shortyawards.com/17th/"https://shortyawards.com/category/16th/data-visualization">See previous winners and honorees for Data Visualization here.</a>"> Data & Insights See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Earned Media See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Event & Experiential See previous winners and honorees here.</a>""> Gamification See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Humor See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Innovative Media Buying Strategy See previous winners and honorees here.</a>""> Integration with Traditional Media See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Internal Communications See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> LGBTQ Community Engagement See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Micro-Influencer Strategy See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Multicultural Community Engagement See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Music & Dance See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> On a Shoestring See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Organic Promotion See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Paid & Amplification See previous winner and honorees here.</a>"> Physical and Digital Convergence See previous winner and honorees here.</a>"> Public Service Announcement See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Real Time Response See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> SEO & SEM See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Social Commerce See previous winners and honorees here.</a>"> Storytelling

The Least We Can Do: Behind the Scenes

Entered in Featurette or Behind The Scenes Video

Objective

Every day, men and women in uniform step up to defend our freedoms – willingly sacrificing comfort, safety, and sometimes their lives. Many of us never stepped into those boots. You don’t need to have worn the uniform to serve now. At The PenFed Foundation, we ensure our veterans have the tools, resources, and opportunities they deserve. Whether it’s support during their transition, mentorship, or emergency assistance after a natural disaster - donations to The PenFed Foundation helps those who once shouldered the burden for us. 

To help spread this message, we worked with talented songwriters to create “The Least We Can Do,” and produced a behind-the-scenes video to showcase its creation. Our objective was to humanize the song and its message by giving our audience an inside look at the emotional process behind its production. Through this content, we aimed to connect with our supporters on a deeper level, engage new audiences, and inspire action to support veterans and their families. By revealing the story behind the song, we sought to elevate The PenFed Foundation’s mission and drive support to give back to those who have given so much.

Strategy

The strategic approach behind the video was to create an experience that blended storytelling with advocacy, offering a behind-the-scenes glimpse of the song’s creation. We began by working closely with two incredible songwriters who share passion for giving back to the veteran community, ensuring it would resonate authentically with our target audience. The behind-the-scenes video was designed to amplify this creative process, capturing raw moments of collaboration, emotion, and storytelling.

To bring our vision to life, we planned in three phases:

  1. Pre-production – Our team worked with The PenFed Foundation President Andrea McCarren and took the often-unspoken feeling of guilt for not serving our country and brainstormed key themes tied to this feeling. The Foundation teamed up with Johnny and Heidi, the inspiring songwriters, and invited them to bring their own experiences to the song composition.
  2. Filming – We captured intimate moments from the songwriting sessions and interviews with the songwriters as they shared their own feelings around wanting to serve our veterans. We included Johnny’s personal experience with being surrounded by veterans, but never having served himself. We used his story to share this common feeling of guilt and to show there are other ways to serve our country.
  3. Post-production – In the editing phase, we focused on creating a compelling narrative that highlighted the human aspect of the song’s creation. This wasn’t just about showing how the song was made; it was about why it mattered and how deeply is connected to The PenFed Foundation’s mission.

One of the key challenges we faced was ensuring that the video felt authentic and not purely promotional. It’s an intimate and inspiring look into the work we do and more importantly, why we do it. By blending the emotional song with the storytelling of the behind-the-scenes look, we created an experience that leaves viewers ready to make a difference in the lives of our veterans.

Results

The release of “The Least We Can Do” Behind the Scenes had a significant impact in raising awareness with our audience. Once the video was posted to social media, it quickly gained attention and had nearly 62,000 views over the course of just 5 days. The video maintained the audience’s attention which can be seen by the sharp increase in our 3-second views and 1-minute views during the month. Our 3-second views increased by 270% and our 1-minute views increased by 549%. We successfully shared our mission with a broader audience and inspired them to take action and support our military community.

Our content resonated with the large audience we reached too. The release of the video kicked off our End of Year Giving campaign that ultimately brought in nearly $5,000 in donations. We had a peak in content interactions in the following days after posting, leading to a 25% increase in total content interactions during that month.

Ultimately, the behind-the-scenes video achieved its objective by creating a strong emotional connection with our audience, increasing engagement, and driving both support and awareness for our mission. This reinforced the power of creative storytelling and its ability to bring people together around a shared cause. We consider this effort a smashing success because it didn’t just promote a song – it ignited action towards supporting a community who has sacrificed so much.

Media

Entrant Company / Organization Name

The PenFed Foundation

Links

Entry Credits