Commentary by Jezlan Moyet, president of Georgia Entertainment
I just watched a company fall in love with itself on screen.
Hundreds of employees from dozens of offices across the country descended on Atlanta for a two-day companywide summit. As part of the gathering, we created something they had never done before: a film festival featuring short films made by their own offices, complete with finalists, screenings, winners and awards.
What unfolded was bigger than a film festival.
Not in a vain way. In the way that happens when people finally get to see, all at once, what they have been building every single day without ever stepping back to look at it.
We had the privilege of helping lead the experience for this national firm. We asked every office to do something simple and terrifying at the same time: tell us who you are in sixty seconds, on camera. No professional crews, and no scripts. Just teams, phones and one prompt: What makes your office unique?
What came back floored me. The same people who had warned us, candidly, that they were “not creative” delivered some of the most inspired work I have ever seen. I have spent much of my career in front of and behind the camera, helping people shape stories for an audience. I know the difference between being featured and being seen. These teams were seen.
One office created something straight out of a sitcom. Another turned a coffee mug into a metaphor with brilliant comedic timing. One wrote an original song while another rang a doorbell that launched a classic mashup parody of one of my favorite holiday films. One captured leadership on camera in a way that felt more honest than any polished LinkedIn bio ever could, complete with a partner practicing his golf swing while standing on a boardroom table. Every video was different, and every one was unmistakably, specifically them.
Here is what I keep coming back to: this firm has one brand, one reputation, one set of values, and one name on the door. But that brand does not live in a manual or style guide. It lives in dozens of rooms across dozens of cities. It lives in the way people treat each other when no one is watching, in the high-pressure moments and in the inside jokes. The film festival gave the firm’s culture a stage.
We talk a lot in the creative industries about storytelling as a marketing tool, something you deploy for a campaign, a launch, or a recruiting push. But I think we are underselling it. Storytelling gives the work meaning. It helps people understand not only what a company does, but what it believes, how it behaves, and why they should even care. Story is how a company discovers what it already believes about itself.
The creative industries have understood this for a long time. Now, storytelling is moving from the edges of business into the center of how companies market, advertise, recruit, communicate and build culture. People don’t connect to institutions in the abstract; they connect to people, values and cultures they can see and, more importantly, feel.
A strong brand carries a clear through line across many distinct voices, including voices far beyond the usual coastal centers of influence. National scale should amplify local identity, not erase it. Consistency requires trust, not sameness. And if I am honest, we are all tired of the monotony.
This reel was genuinely one of the best things I have ever helped produce. Still, the most rewarding part came before the final cut. It was watching people who had never considered themselves creative realize that creativity was already there.
Everyone has a story. Most people have simply never been handed a reason, given permission, or offered the support to tell it. Being able to encourage those ideas, help people find the confidence to pursue them, and then watch their work appear on screen in front of the entire company was deeply rewarding.
We heard the laughter when an inside joke landed. We saw the pride when an office recognized itself. We watched colleagues see one another differently. Each local office became part of a larger national story without losing what made it distinctive.
The experience also reinforced something much larger. The creative economy deserves a clear seat at the tables where corporate priorities and public policy are shaped.
The disciplines of the creative industries can help every company, every profession, and every leader better understand who they are, communicate more honestly, and build stronger connections with the people they serve. Creativity is not limited to people with creative titles. Storytelling is not limited to entertainment. Both are essential to how organizations build trust, attract talent, strengthen culture, and shape reputation.
If you lead a team, a company or a brand, your people are already telling your story every day. They are telling it in meetings, client calls, cups of coffee and the way they respond when things get hard. Whether you capture it or not, the story is already being written.
The question is whether you are paying attention and if you are willing to give the story a stage and creativity a seat at the table.
