When the Situation Is Ahead of the Story
A practical guide to strategic video communications for complex organisations.
Free. Immediate. Written for the people who have to make high-stakes communication work.
Who this is for
You're probably a communications, stakeholder engagement, or external affairs professional inside a mid to large organisation. And you're dealing with something genuinely complex.
A major infrastructure project. A community consultation where trust is fragile. An organisational change that leadership wants to explain well. A programme rollout where stakeholder alignment isn't optional.
You know that what you communicate over the next six to eighteen months will either build the credibility your organisation needs, or quietly erode it. And you know that the reports, the emails, and the briefing packs aren't doing the job on their own.
This guide is for you.
What the guide covers
This isn't a guide about video production. It's about a specific communication problem that video, done strategically and with documentary instinct, is unusually well-suited to solve.
The problem: your organisation is in a situation, and the story hasn't caught up yet.
That gap is more common than it should be. It's also more costly than most organisations realise, until something goes wrong.
The guide works through three dimensions that determine whether an organisation is ready to use authentic storytelling effectively.
Clarity.
Does your organisation actually know what story it needs to tell right now? Not the approved message. The real story, the one your most important audiences need to understand and feel.
Assets.
Do you have the human stories, footage, and content infrastructure to tell that story? And if you have footage from past productions, is it organised and usable, or is it sitting on a hard drive somewhere?
Readiness.
Is your organisation genuinely willing to let real people speak honestly? This is the question most communications strategies don't ask directly. It's also the one that determines whether any of this actually works.
What you'll get from reading it
A clearer picture of where your organisation actually stands across these three dimensions.
A framework for assessing whether your communication is genuinely building trust or quietly eroding it.
An honest account of why polished corporate video often makes the problem worse, and what documentary instinct does differently.
Specific questions worth sitting with before your next production decision.
And at the end, a link to The Situation Readiness Score: a ten-minute diagnostic that gives you a personalised assessment and a specific recommendation for where to focus.
A note from the author
Most of the organisations we work with aren't struggling because they lack resources or good intentions. They're struggling because their communication is lagging behind their situation.
They're messaging when they need to be telling stories. They're talking at audiences when those audiences need to feel heard. And the video they've produced, often at considerable expense, looks polished but lands flat, because the truth that would actually move people got managed out of it in the edit.
This guide reflects how we think about that problem. The frameworks in it will work regardless of whether you ever work with us. Our hope is that by the time you finish it, you'll have a clearer picture of where your organisation stands, and a more grounded sense of what to do next.
Simon Baker,
The Bakery
Download the guide
Free.
No sign up.
No spam.
Just the guide.
You might also be interested in
The Situation Readiness Score
A ten-minute diagnostic across Clarity, Assets, and Readiness. Get a personalised score and a specific recommendation for where to focus.
The Narrative Brief Session
A half-day working session for communications professionals in a live, complex situation. Find the right narrative before production begins.
Start a Conversation
If you'd rather talk than read, that's fine too. Tell us what your situation is and we'll tell you honestly what we think.