Crew Cuts Travels with A+E to Create Networks 'Brave Storytellers' Campaign

A+E is celebrating the stories you can find across the United States if you just take the time to look for them. The network spent time filming all over the country to create this gorgeous campaign and brought editor, Joe Siegel, from Crew Cuts with them.

The spot is part of the network’s “Brave Storytellers” campaign. It was co-produced by A+E and Samsung. In it, viewers can hear a poem that poet IN-Q wrote specifically for this campaign, narrated by him, as footage from across America is shown.

“What we suffer from currently across our society is the feeling that we don’t belong to the camps we say we belong to,” said A+E CMO Amanda Hill. “We just know what we don’t agree with from the other camps. This video series gives people a chance to fight against the monster of prejudice and the chance to make a connection they otherwise wouldn’t take time to understand.”

This spot is the initial “chapter,” of the campaign. With it, A+E is highlighting how brave storytellers are all around us. For Hill, she sees this campaign as a way to reach new viewers of A+E because she understands the needs of the current audience.

“We’re not targeting a demographic, but we’re reaching out to a belief system,” she said. “They have a low tolerance of bullshit, and we want to show people real, meaningful stories.”

The chapters of this campaign were shot like an editorial documentary, despite all teams coming together to produce it far faster than previous efforts. With no time for set contracts, filming teams “just got in a car to drive across America for a few weeks and didn’t stage anything.” Samsung, she said, agreed to work on the project in just 24 hours.

“It’s not meant to feel like marketing,” said Hill. “You can’t just pump out a spot and revisit it in a year without standing up for your message. This is something we believe in, and this is how we’re expressing it. This will make you look differently at the people in our society."