Graydaze is a long-time client, and the paint contracting company has grown with leaps and bounds over the years. In early 2022 we learned that the company was to be honored as one of the 40 fastest growing companies in Georgia and would be included in the annual Fast 40 gala event in June.

The Association for Corporate Growth (ACG) requested one (or more) of the company leaders answer questions, on camera, about how they managed to continue their growth through the difficult (to say the least) business environment that everyone has experienced over the last two years.

We saw this as an opportunity to tell Graydaze’s story, extending the Q&A to cover unique aspects of the business that would be useful in promoting the company as well as recruiting new talent. We created a series of 10 videos (between one and two minutes in length) that have been used in social media posts, getting thousands of views.

Meadow Garden is a museum home in Augusta, Georgia, famous for being the home of George Walton, one of three Georgia signers of the Declaration of Independence.

In 2019 a 10-year preservation-restoration project was undertaken to return the home to a more-historically-accurate state. A capital campaign is planned for 2022, and in order to raise the property’s profile, we’ve created a marketing plan consisting of targeted weekly Facebook posts, featuring interesting stories and historic tidbits. We’ve also created a new ID and are updating their website, adding video and tidying up. The promotion will run until Christmas of 2021.

Click here for more information about this program.

Some examples of the video posts:
The Rotating Roofline
Independence Day Celebration
The Musket Ball and the Staircase

Interviews with key executives, team members or customers are extremely effective in telling your story. Above you’ll see my recently-updated interview reel that includes excerpts from documentaries (finished and in-progress), commercial clients, and work done for non-profits. I hope you enjoy it!

While it’s effective, sometimes the experience of giving the interview on camera, is intimidating. It’s our job to make folks comfortable on-camera, and that includes not cluttering up your office or location or reminding everyone that our time is expensive. That’s why we typically run a small crew for interviews, which helps the subject relax, as there’s not a lot of commotion and it doesn’t break the bank.

Talk may be cheap, as the saying goes—action is what counts. But talk can be more valuable than anything else, if you can communicate earnestly what your message is.

Instead of sending out cards and baskets every December (well, we sent some anyway), we at OF decided to create short films that celebrate the spirt of the holiday season, and send them to our friends and clients.

For 2018, we made Never Too Old For Santa, the story of a 29-year-old that still believes in the jolly old elf. She experiences a Dickensian series of events that help her to an understanding of her place in the world.

I wrote and directed NTOFS, and we used local actors for all of the roles. Josh Depaz composed a beautiful soundtrack. In the spring of 2019 we submitted it to the Southern Shorts Film Festival, where it was screened and won several awards, and scored in the top three in the Made in Georgia category. It was a lot of fun to make.

Click here for the film Mountains + Movies (53 minutes).

Okay, so maybe this should be on Hafodgau.com (our film site) instead of bhyer.com, but I think it’s important to showcase it here. In 2018, after showing my film End of the World Rocks at the West Virginia Filmmakers Festival, Renée Campbell, the festival organizer, mentioned that 2019 would be their 20th anniversary. My wife Cathy suggested that we shoot a documentary about it. Usually it’s me volunteering us for projects like this, but this time she did it. And so it began.

I saw this as a story that had legs, but wasn’t totally sure what direction it would go (as with most documentaries). We began by interviewing all the filmmakers we could find who had been named Filmmaker of the Year by the WVFF and went from there, and a common theme emerged.

Besides the fact that we met some really talented and interesting people, we learned that the difficulties faced by filmmakers in the state are daunting. But they persevere. There are so many tales to tell—as Chip Hitchcock put it, “You can’t swing a dead cat without finding a great story to tell.”

So Mountains + Movies was born. So far it’s been picked up by five festivals (waiting on decisions from several more); it’s a tough year for festivals.

We had been producing content for Exmark for several years, and they always liked the productions—they held audiences and provided relevant information for the target market.

For 2020, we went all-in on original content for Exmark’s Backyard Life mini-site (backyard.exmark.com), and the content became more varied, including everything from done-in-a-weekend how-to videos, to a cooking show (Prime Cuts), a travelogue of beautiful properties (Dream Yards) and even a reality show (Country Livin’ With The Morgans).

Additional videos from influencers have made the site a central hub for Exmark’s audience of rural- and outdoor-lifestyle customers.