An issue like energy affordability can quickly become a conversation about rates, grids, demand, and data centers. Those details matter. But they don’t always help someone understand what the issue actually feels like for a family trying to make ends meet.
How do you explain an issue so big that people from all walks of life can appreciate it? We started with why it matters: the people. Hearing the everyday person share the challenges they’re facing tells us where the story will go and who needs to hear it.
Start With the People, Not the Video
Before planning what to film, we started with different questions:
- Who is living with this issue?
- Whose experience can help others understand why it matters?
- Who needs to hear this message?
- What context does the audience need to understand the bigger picture?
Those questions led us to two perspectives that could work together.
Finding the Human Story
For the affordability video, we found a resident who could speak to the everyday reality behind rising energy costs. Her story put a person and a household behind an issue that can otherwise feel distant or overly technical.
But personal experience was only part of the story.
We also spoke with a community leader who works alongside residents facing these challenges every day. He could help explain what families are experiencing, the resources they turn to for help, and why changes impacting our energy system could make an already difficult situation harder.
Together, those voices did something neither could do alone. One helped us feel the impact while the other helped us understand it.
Creating Space for the Next Story
We didn’t want the conversation to stop with the people on the screen.
The video ends by asking others to share how these issues are affecting them. Because one person’s experience can often open the door for someone else to say, This is happening to me too.
That’s why storytelling strategy begins long before someone presses record.
It’s asking the right questions, listening for the voices that aren’t being heard, and connecting those experiences with the people who need to hear them.
The video is what people see. The strategy is what makes the story worth sharing.