Tell us a bit about your organization and what your specialty is in the film and video space.
Culture Catalyst is a boutique, female-led, independent company that creates, develops and produces diverse, cinematic stories – from branded content to narrative films to tech-forward multiscreen live performances – with the mission to catalyze transformation in individual lives and shared cultures.
What is your organization’s ethos and how does it set you apart from industry competitors?
I founded Culture Catalyst to create and produce stories that matter, stories that can shift and uplift consciousness, showing us that we’re more alike than different. My focus is collaborative rather than competitive, but what sets Culture Catalyst apart is its heart-centric approach to each and every project, no matter the size. As an independent filmmaker, I’ve honed the art of wearing multiple hats to create high-production values on low budgets. My freelance-based team and I passionately collaborate with our clients and other creatives across industries and platforms to make the best product possible: on purpose, on brand, on budget.
How can people join or learn more about what you do?
Portfolio
Culture Catalyst website
Content Catalyst website
Tell us about your Telly Award winning piece. What’s the story behind it?
CMO Jacqueline Woods reached out to Writer/Director/EP Gretl Claggett (Culture Catalyst) to join her team as a freelance storytelling consultant because Teradata’s rebranding campaign was missing a story that emotionally engaged its B2B audience, inspiring them to learn more about the brand’s new positioning and product suite as “The Trusted AI Company.”
Gretl did a strategic deep dive and found that most of Teradata’s (and its competitors’) videos “told” rather than “showed” — talking at rather than to their audiences. The most common style: executive “talking head” interviews intercut with B-roll and stock footage. These videos relayed information but seldom took the audience on a compelling journey filled with authentic human experiences — and a cathartic payoff — that emotionally connected the audience to the brand.
Because Teradata was looking to innovate and create breakthroughs for its B2B customers using “Trusted AI,” why not seize this opportunity to create another kind of breakthrough by innovating the brand’s — plus the entire industry’s — storytelling?
After landing on Teradata’s target audiences — C-Suite Executives, Partner-Sellers, Influencers, and Employees — Gretl and team pitched the concept of a “narrative film” featuring a protagonist who’d be relatable to the brand’s predominantly-male, well-educated audience. The authentic, human story travels across the brand’s top target industries that touch all our lives — Telecom, Transportation/Airlines, Entertainment/Sports, Financial Services, and Healthcare — showing how Teradata, working behind the scenes, empowers “Trusted AI” to help create impactful customer experiences and even save lives.
“THE JOURNEY HOME … Empowered by Teradata” Synopsis:
When a graduate student gets an urgent call from his mom because his dad has been hospitalized and the prognosis is dire, he must make a sudden “journey home.” As Trusted AI helps the son, and those he encounters, overcome obstacles — including rerouting his flight around storms — a doctor fights the ticking clock using Trusted AI to desperately search for a way to save the dad’s life and help him make his own “journey home.”
What are you most proud of about this piece? What was your biggest challenge during production and how did you solve it?
There were many challenges, far too many to name … but in all cases, tenacity, teamwork and a vision for “doing the right thing” paid off.
Because of the low budget, and extremely tight production timeline, we decided to film in Chicago on college campuses (less expensive than on the coasts) and cast the film with non-union actors. We also hired a multicultural, non-union crew with more than half the department heads being female.
Creating an onscreen family is always tricky, even under the best of circumstances. After an exhaustive search, we finally found our “family” of heart-centered actors who represented Teradata’s diverse audience and also had deep, authentic, personal connections with the film’s characters and story.
Do you have any advice to other filmmakers based on your career or your team’s approach to work?
Forge your authentic voice and vision, follow your heart, keep learning and practicing your craft, no matter what, and stay courageous, flexible, collaborative, and tenacious – unafraid to push boundaries and pioneer. #alwaysbecreating #failbetter #makestoriesthatmatter
Can you share a behind the scenes story or fun fact about the making of your piece?
After four decades in business, in 2024, Teradata was rebranding itself as “The Trusted AI Company.” “Trusted AI” being the way people, data, and AI work together — with transparency — to create value.
Teradata was known, respected and trusted for data warehousing and its on-premises legacy. The brand was gaining traction for its hybrid cloud approach but not for its AI, data and analytics strengths or, most importantly, its direct customer benefits.
It was time to shift the brand’s “narrative.”
Throughout those four decades of business, Teradata had never before made a narrative brand film or a commercial. None of the brand’s competitors had done so, either. Gretl Claggett, Writer, Director, and Executive Producer (Culture Catalyst), brought the idea to the Teradata team and delivered this human-centric film on a small indie budget.
This is a first for the brand — a trailblazing moment — that also bucks current storytelling trends, especially in this technology sector.
Tell us about the most memorable response you got from this work.
One memory I have is showing the first rough cut to the Teradata team and seeing each of them moved to tears at the end of the film. I also recall getting an email from a colleague at an agency I sometimes freelance with that read: “Really tremendous job with the Teradata film – I didn’t expect to get so emotional on a Thursday morning at my desk but so it goes!”
The fact that this brand film truly moves people is especially rewarding because it proves something that I fiercely believe: Even “corporate, B2B” films/videos about enterprise-wide technology systems, and such, can have heart — communicating technical information while also connecting and unifying us through our shared, universal human experiences.
Complete this sentence: ‘Great video storytelling is…’
… visceral, immersive, timely, timeless, personal and universal.
