Still on their website

Some industries you have to explain. This one you have to out-argue.

Web design and SEO had a reputation problem, and unlike most reputation problems this one was earned. The client's own script said it flat out — an industry notorious for poor customer service and scams. Which puts a company whose entire pitch is we answer the phone when you call in an awkward spot. Everyone in the market says the same thing. Nobody believes it.

So when smartwebpros.com in London came to us, they didn't ask for a commercial. They asked for something that would make people trust them before the first phone call.

We wrote the brief back in one sentence and it became the whole method: value is hard to quantify in online services, so trust has to do the work instead. You cannot assert that in a voice-over. It has to come off people's faces.

The plan was twelve videos. A promo. A four-to-five-minute story film. Profiles of the two owners. How-to videos from the SEO and web design leads. An office tour. And client testimonials, shot at the clients' own businesses rather than in our space.

We shot the interview day in one office — Suite 501 of the Royal Bank Building on Richmond Street. The interviews were set depth-of-field over the left shoulder, into the cityscape of Robinson's Hall and Bud Gardens, which meant extra daylight through the window and a crew of four: me, Rene Defayette on camera, Anita Twynstra running production, Tabi Ferguson on make-up.

The series was called Behind the Business. Jeff Christofferson, the president. Derek Bekaan, the co-owner and the one who actually builds the sites. Bill Verboom, who ran the SEO department. And Connie Roberts, an associate whose own marketing firm got a profile out of it too.

The testimonials went on separate days, at their own locations — Assaad Eldik at Armour Shield Roofing, Ralph Citro at Forest City Window and Door, Bob Peel at Ace Trashbusters. That is the part of a trust campaign that still works. Not the company saying it is trustworthy. Somebody else, standing in their own shop, saying it.

The how-tos were the quiet part of the job and the hardest to plan. Two cameras and a screen recorder on a live demonstration, twenty minutes of it, cut down to five. You cannot fake expertise with the screen on.

The first film out was Jeff Christofferson's profile — five minutes and thirty-eight seconds. It is still up on our own channel. It is also the only one of the twelve I can find in public; the rest live behind direct links, or never went up at all.

We came back some years later for the office itself. Stills of the new space and the people in it, and two background films for the website.

Here is the part I keep coming back to. Their website today is running our photographs. Not lookalikes — our files, still sitting on the page, doing the job we shot them for. That is what it looks like when the work agrees with the claim.