Creative Services Case Study: Neighborly

Oneupweb has worked with home services franchise leader Neighborly^® brands for years – since before they were even known as Neighborly. Initially providing SEO services for Molly Maid 10+ years ago, we have since expanded our services with Neighborly brands to include everything from UX and website design & development to content marketing and social media asset creation.

In 2020, our talented team was ready to execute when the Neighborly brand managers needed creative work. Over the last two years, we’ve focused on larger projects like brand and persona videos and brand photography shoots. We’ve also improved our social creative efforts through our content calendars.

Read on to learn more! Or, download the case study in pdf format.

The Strategy

For us, strategy means gaining results that make sense through an efficient, multi-channel-oriented process.

For example, while shooting a large video project, we continually plan for the 6-, 15- or 30-second cutdowns that will come out of it. We also capture photography and b-roll when we’re on set to maximize the brand’s shoot. We’ve become very familiar with Neighborly franchise brand marketing through our blog writing, SEO and other services, and we know that it’s critical to always be creating a unified creative feel across their different brands.

That’s why – whether we’re shooting photography for Mr. Handyman^® or creating a brand video for Five Star Painting^®, we keep in mind the core principles of the Neighborly aesthetic:

• Heartwarming
• Feel-good storytelling
• Expert and professional
• Emotional yet accessible

Scope of Work

Since 2020, we’ve:

• Completed 17 brand photography shoots
• Produced 14 brand videos
• Delivered 3,400 brand photos
• Created 1,194 social media assets (such as cinemagraphs, short videos, quizzes, highly designed images or interactive posts)
• Hired 86 actors (83 humans and 3 canines)

How We Shoot Neighborly Brand Photography

Our brand photography services deliver Neighborly a large portfolio of images that showcase their franchise brands’ services. To make sure we deliver images that Neighborly and their various brand managers are always satisfied with, we put an emphasis on pre-production:

• scouting and securing locations and hiring the right talent
• developing shot lists
• sourcing uniforms, tools, wrapped vehicles, and other brand assets to make the shoots absolutely realistic and representative

In addition to delivering shot lists, we provide the Neighborly brands (and all our clients) with location and talent lookbooks in advance of the shoot so they can weigh in on the homes and actors they feel best exemplify the right demographic for their services.

We want Neighborly and their brand managers to feel as comfortable as possible before we move on to the actual photo shoot.

While on set, we take lots of photos for these brand photography projects, which usually last 1-2 days. Our aim is to secure a wide variety of images.

For Five Star Painting^®, for example, we took close-up “detail” shots and wide-angle “hero” shots for both the interior and exterior of the home. We also aimed to secure homes that had a wide variety of surfaces, such as vinyl, wood, cedar shake, brick, stucco, etc., and interiors with both smooth and textured wall surfaces.

To capture this variety, we traveled to a number of locations around the country. We even completed a Northern and Southern version of a brand photoshoot for multiple Neighborly brands that have locations across the country.

Another key Oneupweb differentiator is that Neighborly – and all our clients – retain ownership of their brand photos in perpetuity. Many production houses only grant usage rights for two years, forcing companies to continually purchase new creative services. But our clients can use Oneupweb’s creative output for as long as they like. (This is especially useful for franchise clients, since marketing assets are placed all over the franchisees’ sites, social media and print materials, making it difficult to track down and remove assets once their usage rights have expired.)  

See some examples of our franchise brand photography below:

How We Produce Neighborly Brand Videos

Just as the photos we create for Neighborly are used across platforms, the videos we produce for Neighborly – and all our clients – are edited to various lengths for use on websites and social media and in email and paid advertising campaigns.

Our detailed 3-step process ensures a worry-free experience.

• Pre-production
  • Writing the scripts
  • Creating the storyboards
  • Sourcing talent, locations and props
  • Creating the production schedule
• Production
  • Traveling to the location
  • Shooting over the course of 2-4 days
  • Capturing versatile b-roll footage for branded use (in addition to brand photography)
• Post-production and delivery
  • Assembling, editing and revising the footage
  • Delivering the full-length video as well as cut-downs for paid media, social, pre-roll ads and more

As with our photography services, our video production grants clients ownership rights in perpetuity. Clients like Neighborly do not need to come back to us after a couple years to purchase more assets and services if they don’t want to. Part of our process is also that clients retain ownership in perpetuity.

How We Create Neighborly Social Media Assets

The social media assets we create for Neighborly home service brands are carefully crafted to be entertaining, engaging and brand-building and are vastly superior to stock images or hastily designed graphics. We call them social “shorts’’ – our term for short videos; cinemagraphs; animations; stylized images; or even just engaging content like quizzes, fun facts, and glowing customer reviews that we produce as part of our content calendars.

Creating them begins with research. Having already learned what makes the Neighborly brands unique over a dozen years of partnership, we began by looking at which blogs or industry or content trends would perform well as social shorts.  We create concepts for each of our social shorts and run them by Neighborly brand managers so that they have the opportunity to provide feedback.

The Results

Neighborly is extremely pleased with the work that we deliver. Not only do we create a unified look and feel across 12 different brands, but we produce imagery and video that enhances each brand’s visual presence in their bid to continue to attract customers (and franchisees).

But don’t just take our word for it – here’s what Neighborly brand managers and marketing execs have to say:

You can view some of the full-length videos we completed for Neighborly brands here:

As of this writing, we continue to provide creative services for many of the Neighborly brands, and we’re thankful for the continued partnership. 

If you’re looking for a creative services partner, you’ve come to the right place. Drop us a note or give us a call at (231) 922-9977. Let’s make something amazing!