Behind the Scenes: Cold Noses, Warm Hearts

At Miranda Creative, our annual holiday video has become one of our favorite year-end customs. We often pair our digital greetings with traditional gifts of client/vendor partner appreciation — this year however we decided to something a little more… well, warm and fuzzy. Here’s why: 

In meetings with our regional nonprofit/human service clients throughout late fall, we heard two powerful refrains:

  • Donations of pet food were leaving local food banks the moment they hit the shelves.
  • Area families were making the heartbreaking decision to part with their beloved pets due to economic hardships.

We knew we had to do something. We decided not to put our logo on a giveaway, but to put our heart in the right place. 

Our creative leadership team came up with the idea of including our cherished pets in our annual holiday video. While this would let us feature some truly adorable creatures, it would also help explain our decision to donate pet food and supplies to regional food banks this year, in lieu of distributing client gifts. 

Naming this concept? Not as easy — 

Paw Humbug

Santa Paws

Deck the Paws

Happy Howlidays

No. No. No. 

Finally, it was an unexpected heart-shaped nose print on a car window that guided our chosen theme — cold noses, warm hearts. 

Planning for this effort began as the leaves were starting to fall, with a simple roll call of participants. This was followed by conceptualization and storyboarding for a photo/video shoot.

We reached out to our long-standing film partners to ask if they were up for an unusual holiday video and to confirm a lack of fur allergies. John Spinnato and his team at 86 Media did not hesitate to get involved. A date was sent and the race was on to find 15 matching striped scarves, dog-friendly props and a location with enough space to accommodate fetching, tossing, and what we knew would be boundless energy. 

Where do we go? Center stage at Chestnut Street Playhouse — a unique blackbox theater that is quickly becoming our second home for studio-based filming. Up went the backdrop, tinsel trees and miniature sleigh. In came lots of love. 

The experience? Fur-flying fun (literally) and strategic use of peanut butter. Over a period of six hours, we enjoyed the happy calamity of trying to get nine dogs and one hamster to model for the camera. There was a lot of sniffing and wrangling, and the camera lens got licked more times than we want to think about. (Sorry, John). 

We went through a LOT of treats.

The end result? 

Ultimately a series of heartwarming photos as well as a 90-second video, explaining how our donation aims to help keep families together.

We distributed this message across our agency channels, including our website, newsletter, and social media pages. We were heartened by the positive response we received, including some people who said they had been inspired to make their own donations of pet food and supplies.

How did Ren, Bentley, Billie Jean, Lucy, Chief, Ryder, Nickel, Nella, Hashtag (and a hamster named QWERTY) respond to this news?
We’ll let the video speak for us: