By Rex Hammock, CEO
We are living in historic times. But how historic and timely, we don’t know.
However, one thing is certain: Now is the best time to record and preserve these times. Now is the best time in history to use technology to record photography, video and audio with quality unimaginable a decade ago.
You don’t know when history happens until it happens.
At Hammock, we have written thousands of pages of content originally planned and used for a print or video or podcast project that later evolved into a “thought leadership” essay or a video documentary project that helped carry forth the company’s story.
You never know when history will reveal itself.
Many of the early masters of what we today call content marketers understood how to use the various forms of media of their day to first capture an event and context. After his mega-success as an automaker, Henry Ford spent three decades collecting and building a museum of artifacts ranging from the chair in which Abraham Lincoln was assassinated to a Stradivarius violin.
The National Corvette Museum is in Bowling Green, Kentucky, known worldwide as the home of the Corvette. Every Corvette in the world since 1981 has been assembled at the General Motors Bowling Green Assembly Plant just a quarter-mile from the National Corvette Museum. Even the priceless, historic one that fell through a sinkhole.
Not only does the Computer History Museum in Mountain View, California, display the technology that was used in the process of creating the computer, but also the individual creators of the technology can still often be found speaking at an event related to their passion.
My Point: Today is a great time to preserve your company’s or organization’s history and future. And that’s not just what you think happens during a pandemic. Preserve the history and context and resilience of any event through which you are living and working or witnessing.
Tell the story of the small stories, and large.
One day, such histories will preserve and inspire another period of historic times.
Image: Getty
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By Rex Hammock, CEO
Many years ago, Hammock Inc. published a corporate magazine for a fast-growing company with more than 30,000 employees. Because much of the company’s growth came from acquisitions, it was a challenge for employees to keep up with all the things the corporation was becoming.
Inspired by National Geographic‘s issue-long photo feature, “A Day in the Life of America,” we suggested creating a corporate version. We told the company’s story through hundreds of photographs in locations across the country—all taken on the same day.