A Toyota national campaign spotlighting a Kensington barber program I'd already been documenting.
Toyota's Small Biz Big Nudge initiative selected Empowering Cuts — a non-profit barber program operating in Kensington, Philadelphia — as one of its featured small businesses. Because I had been documenting the program already, I was brought in to direct and produce the campaign film. The piece had to satisfy a national brand standard while keeping the texture and honesty of the neighborhood it was filmed in.
We shot inside the shop, on the block, and with the kids the program serves. The film ran on Toyota's YouTube channel, across paid social, and on the Toyota.com small-business landing page. The brief from Toyota was "make us proud of who we chose" — the brief from Empowering Cuts was "don't make us look like a charity case." Hitting both at once is the entire job.