W. L. Gore & Associates
Local Innovation
3-minute anchor film + short-form campaign
The ask
Gore has been part of Cecil County for decades and has never gone out of its way to mention it — modesty sits close to a company value there. But people cannot take pride in something nobody has ever explained to them. Gore wanted its own neighbours to understand what gets invented a few miles from where they live.
What we did
Local Innovation is the three-minute anchor: one film that lets the place and the people speak plainly, without slipping into the register of a corporate profile. Around it we built a campaign of short pieces, each taking a single idea and following it back to the person who had it — so the scale of what happens across Cecil County and Delaware accumulates over weeks rather than arriving all at once. Every short was then rebuilt for social rather than cropped, so a vertical cut holds a face where a letterboxed one would have lost it.
More from this project
Built for social, not cropped for it
The same story, recut for where it lives
Transcript — Local Innovation
I like to refer to Cecil County as just a small town America. It's just a good place to be. I'm a lifelong resident and I wouldn't want to live anywhere else. There's not many people in this area that don't at least know that Gore exists. Everybody knows that those those buildings are there. It's Gore has been around for a long time, and you see the signs and the banners up. You go to the Little League field here in Elkton.
You see the Gore banner. It's good to have company in your area that's, you know, interested in keeping the environment clean and supporting your local organizations. I first became aware of Gore with Gore-Tex hitting the market and becoming such a phenomenal product. But when we moved to Cecil County in 2013, I suddenly realized they have a huge presence here and they have incredible campuses throughout the county. They have committed themselves to supporting the community, helping develop community. They offer their support by getting behind some of their employees who, you know, choose to get involved in various organizations.
And I think that has a multiplier effect. About 40 years now. It just became a part of my life. I just always loved the culture, and I loved how we always tried to get things back to the community, and we always tried to do the right thing. I think, you know, I'm proud to be a part of Gore, and to be have been a part of it for such a long time. And it's rare that, you know, you have opportunities to stay with the same organization for as long as I have and have had the opportunities to grow and take on new roles and, you know, just, you know, being a good, upstanding organization means a lot for the community.
I grew up in Cecil County, so to have such an unbelievable enterprise, so close right here in the community, and what I tried to do was always whenever I talk about Gore's promote it, but always thought about how do we get back? So I sit on the board. I'm the vice president of the Fair Hill Nature Center, and we see about 8000 students on a yearly basis.
And we teach them about conservation, and we teach them about soils. We teach them about bugs. We let them get dirty. We get them out and just really see this beautiful area that is sitting right here in the heart of Steel County. I think the work environment here kind of passes to the community. You know, when they see, you know, a group of associates out somewhere, you know, doing work because they want to be there. It makes an impact.
It's just the quiet way that they support key organizations and and get things done for the good of the entire county.
Transcribed from the delivered film.