Almost 900 Hallmarkers from our Creative Community recently filled the beautiful Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts in Kansas City for a day of inspiring talks by speakers from around the country. We walked away with insight, renewal, and newly defined sense of our Creative Community’s purpose. Read all about it, and be sure to watch the awesome video below by Hallmark’s own Union Hill Media Studio!
“Why” is a powerful word. It speaks to our purpose, our reason for being. It’s as important for a creative community like ours to understand its own “why” as it is for an individual creator. “Why” leads us beyond what we do or how we do it to who we are—and who we are as creative people at Hallmark is you. Like you, we are moms, dads, friends, sons, and daughters. We know that the images and words we create can change your day, and maybe even the world. We are here to help you celebrate meaningful moments. We are here to help you come together. Our “why” is the “why” of Hallmark. We are Hallmark Creative. We make it Hallmark.
The statement above tells the story of our role in people’s lives and connects it to the role we play here at Hallmark. It was written collaboratively by a team of talented people from around our creative community. It was an amazing and inspiring journey that helped us rediscover what we stand for. (On a personal note, I’m SO proud to be a part of an organization with such an inspiring purpose. Who else gets to do what we do?)
In early May, we brought the whole Hallmark Creative Community (plus creative teams from Hallmark subsidiaries, select business partners, and representatives from Kansas City arts organizations) together for the first time in decades at our 2016 Creative Leadership Symposium.
Almost 900 Hallmarkers filled the Kauffman Center for the Performing Arts to get inspired, think differently, and be renewed. To kick it off we shared a video that was created to bring our newly crafted purpose statement to life.
Next, speakers from around the country—several with personal or professional ties to Kansas City—spoke about how creativity works in a organizations and what personally inspires their thinking, innovating, and creating. Our purpose as a creative community was the theme of the symposium, so each speaker’s words addressed a different aspect of our new purpose statement.
We heard from Dayton Moore, General Manager of the Kansas City Royals, about building a championship culture (Go Royals!); Gillian Flynn, author or the best selling novel Gone Girl, about finding and learning to trust our own unique voices; Rob Riggle, actor/comedian, about the importance of humor (best line: “Hallmark doesn’t make cards, it makes joy grenades.”); Karen Paik, Creative Development Executive at Pixar, about the process and craft of storytelling; and many others.
Creativity went into every aspect of this symposium. Hallmark’s Creative Marketing Studio created all of our collateral materials, including a sketchbook for each attendee and banners to display throughout the Kauffman Center. Our own Union Hill Studio captured footage of our Creative Community at work and play, and used it to bring our purpose statement to life in the video above.
We hope you’ve enjoyed this peek into the magic of our creative community—and even more importantly, we hope that it inspires you to live with purpose, too.
How do you get inspired? Tag us on Instagram at @think.make.share and let us know!
Photography and Video: Hallmark Union Hill Photo Studio