Lock, stock, and two smoking flaws.

The inevitable problem with any marketing storytelling film is that most resort to stock clips for creative expression. It’s a cost-effective way to visualize concepts, and while some of it is actually beautiful footage, it comes at a different cost than money (especially when the same clip is playing in the next booth).

For starters, it can never be specific—it’s unbranded, doesn’t feature the right audience, or illustrate exact hardware—important when it’s a combined hardware/service offering like Intelsat’s. It also, in many cases, is the exact footage everyone else is using (did someone say competitors?), and that can dilute uniqueness in the marketplace.

However, for government and military offerings such as Intelsat’s, there’s an even worse problem. Inauthenticity sticks out like a sore thumb to anyone who has ever served in the military—which, as it turns out, is 95% of their buyers.

Be better than everyone else.

It only made sense that we identify the story and plan to shoot it ourselves, giving Intelsat a way to stand head-and-shoulders above their competitors. That difference is clear, demonstrated in a film that shows what their solution is and how it works, along with unique and accurate depictions that were advised by an ex-military armorer—all to put the viewer in the middle of the action. You can smell the gas from the humvee, feel the heat of the desert, hear the ground rustling around you.

Crafting four distinct stories, covering use cases from border patrol and on-the-ground operations to new technology and ops in the air, each came to life in a compelling and accurate manner. We consulted with experts—and even learned more than we thought we would about things like troop formations and how heavy that flack jacket actually is (it’s really heavy).

The end result? We’d heard from a little birdie that someone who normally is, shall we say, less than impressed with military depictions in marketing videos said they’d never seen anything as accurate as what we had captured on screen.

Whoa.