Media: short film; integrated brand & press campaign; events world tour

Credits: Executive Producer & Global Head of Content

Awards: 2x Clios; Cannes Lions shortlist; accepted to 4 Academy Award-qualifying film festivals; featured in the US State Department's American Film Showcase

Production Company: Breakwater Studios

In partnership with Publicis Sapient’s CMO and CEO, I developed and produced a series of three 15-minute films that show the human impact of the company’s work. Forgiving Johnny is the second film in that series.

This film tells the story of one of the first successful diversion applications in Los Angeles history. Even though state law permits the diversion of disabled defendants to treatment instead of prison, it turns out that almost nobody was actually being diverted. Why? The process of applying for diversion would require a lawyer to manually track down reams of physical paperwork. For court-appointed public defenders who are already stretched far beyond their limits, the process was too labyrinthine to even pursue...that is, until Publicis Sapient digitized all 600 million records at the Los Angeles County Public Defender's Office. Johnny, the developmentally disabled man at the center of this film, is hopefully the first of many LACPDO defendants to benefit from this digital transformation. 

No Publicis Sapient branding appears anywhere in Forgiving Johnny. Instead, we used the film as a door-opener to start conversations we never would have had access to otherwise. And it worked:

--- Forgiving Johnny led to 47 media placements, the most for any initiative in our company's history, totaling nearly $10 million in earned media value. Some highlights include NBC, Mashable, Tech Brew, Variety, and Fast Company. 

--- Working with Oscar-winning director Ben Proudfoot, we sold the film to TIME magazine, which partially offset the cost of production. Not only did this massively increase the film's exposure, but it also provided an example of marketing actually helping to pay for itself.

--- NBA All Star and social justice advocate Karl-Anthony Towns agreed to sign on as an executive producer to the film, which was a major factor cited by the NBA in its decision to award him its 2023-2034 Social Justice Champion award.

Forgiving Johnny became our company's top talking point with prospective clients, recruits, and analysts. And so even though 2023 was full of milestones, including Sapient helping Publicis Groupe become the most valuable holding company in the world, our CEO Nigel Vaz still called this film his top highlight of the year.

This goes to show the power of what brand filmmaking can accomplish, not just for a marketing department, but for an entire company.