On-camera research: Incredible Curious Adventures & re-storying the world

Sugarbird Studios offers brands, companies, and organisations the opportunity, through on-camera stakeholder research, to initiate and facilitate collaborative conversations with stakeholders. We work with you to determine key stakeholders to interview and scope the line of inquiry to match your objectives. We set up the stakeholder interviews and take it from there. Our experience has shown that people are very open to speaking on camera, and where there are sensitivities, we limit the interview to audio recordings or interview notes, although this is very rare. Each interview is transcribed.

The overarching insights are synthesized into a comprehensive written report and a documentary that tells the INSIGHTS STORY. The documentary becomes a resource for your organisation to share widely with staff, partners, collaborators, and key stakeholders to facilitate greater understanding and recognition of common ground and to build a path to shared futures and collaborative effort.

On-camera stakeholder research provides a powerful and intimate way for an organisation to seek and facilitate meaningful stakeholder dialogue around a collective narrative. Stakeholders appreciate their voice being heard and are generally very keen to be part of a greater and more inspiring solution. On-camera stakeholder research supports this possibility.

Clients have included Momentum, Transnet National Ports Authority, Transnet Port Terminals, and Gen Re(South Africa and Global). One of our most exciting research projects to date has been ‘The Incredible Curious Global Adventure’, a global inquiry for Gen Re, exploring with stakeholders and thought leaders the future of insurance.

re-story.world … newly released

And our most recent and most thought-provoking on-camera research project has been re-story.world that speaks to a deeper, more participatory, and systemic call for change and re-storying.

re-story.world … South Africa from Gen Re CONNECT on Vimeo.

The Incredible Curious Adventure - capturing the collective narrative re the future of insurance

In April 2016, Sugarbird Studios and Gen Re embarked on an Incredible Curious Adventure - stakeholder research exploring the future of the insurance industry. Our research explored the emerging trends impacting the industry, the changing nature of uncertainty, signs of breakdown and discontinuity in organisations and the industry, a new SMART customer-centric context, technology as a game-changer, brands of the future, and the future in Africa.

We sought out and spoke to insurance industry leaders, futurists, digital specialists, brand experts, 3D printing innovators, and fintech/insurtech players. We asked them about the future and captured their thinking on film. What we found was powerful and thought-provoking. But, what is most exciting, is the new conversation this documentary inspired in the insurance industry, with insurtechs and fintechs joining in. The narrative, a story of a future in our midst and on the horizon, has proven to be energising and helpful as a thinking framework and has very quickly created shared understanding for conversations for change and innovation to take root.

The message is clear: It’s time to shift how we frame and look at the world, how we do business, how we innovate, the problems we solve and how we solve them.

The Incredible Curious Adventure - Full Documentary from ICA on Vimeo.

In 2017, we travelled the world in search of a global story, interviewing some 70 thought leaders in 7 countries. Watch the global story here.

*V_FINAL_GENRE_ICA_GLOBAL_FINAL_LONG NEW MIX 2 from Shereen Amos on Vimeo.

Together, these collective narratives are shaping industry thinking and inviting new and exciting players to the conversation, enabling a larger stakeholder ecosystem to take shape for truly disruptive and regenerative innovation to come about.

The content harvested from these inquiries has also been produced as a podcast series, Gen Re’s Digital Dialogues. Listen here to the first podcast - episode 1 of 10.

Episode 1: Global disruption and a “fitness for change” from Shereen Amos on Vimeo.