Storyboarding and Creation of Franklin Templeton Behavioral Finance Videos

Franklin Templeton Investments has a respected brand within the financial space. With over seven hundred billion in assets under management and a continually volitile stock market, it needs to retain the respect of it's prospective clients. However, as millenials begin investing in larger numbers, Franklin needs to reach out the the younger demographic in order to catch younger generations.

Franklin's marketiing team came to creative services wanting to start a series of short (3-5 min.) videos that explain complicated financial concepts. In order to engage millenials, and newcomers to investing, the concepts were to be explained in a simple manner. Additionally, the video imagery could step aside from the traditional Franklin Branding and be more lighthearted.

I initially created two different moodboard directions with sample frames; one with a simple and clean flat look, and the pop-up book style option that was selected. One we had a direction, I worked with another senior designer and art director to develop the stlye further with style frames created in After Effects and Photoshop. As the script was developed, after our initial brainstorming meetings, I made the pencil sketches of the storyboards. After approval, I created the digital version of the storyboard. The next phase was the actual animation process in After Effects. I did have some assistance from two other designers, but most of the video I created alone. As for the audio, a voice actor was selected in Scotland (for the accent) and we ran through the voice-over on the phone. I did the final editing of the sound effects in Premiere.

The series has blossomed into a series of six videos (of which I completed two). As a campaign they have been promoted with landing pages, display ads, and social media. But it is safe to say that they have been seen more than 80,00 times. They have also been translated into more than 6 languages for over 10 local markets. Today these videos are still featured on the Economic Fundamentals Initiative website and others as a fun way to teach complicated economic concepts.