Delivered:
Content Design / Strategy / Art Direction / Video / Photography / Scripting
Summary:
In today’s economic and political landscape, getting ahead is more difficult than ever. 55% of Americans say their financial health is fair or poor. 20% of Americans believe they will never own a home. And 59% of homebuyers believe purchasing a home is more stressful than dating. People young and old are overwhelmed by the process of buying a home, which negatively impacts their overall health.
Enter the Rate App, the holistic wellness app that helps people balance the financial, the physical, and the mental. With expert led content being released every day, someone needed to wrangle all that content .
This case study covers what it took to get the app to launch. My involvement with the project and company went well beyond this.
The Ask:
Create a library of video content to populate of a holistic wellness app that helps people with their financial, physical, and mental health.
My Role:
As the creative director for the Rate App, I led the content strategy for the personal and financial wellness sections and oversee the production across multiple media including photography, video, copy, and graphic design. Collaboration was key. Working with a talented team of photographers, videographers, editors, writers, and designers, I made sure every piece of content aligned with the app’s vision. Then, I partnered with the product designers, developers, product managers, and marketing teams to launch the app and take it to 2.0.
Strategy
What does wellness mean? For Rate it means an active pursuit of practices, habits, and lifestyle choices that lead to better financial, physical, and mental health. The goal was to create a content library where individuals can explore different wellness pillars on one platform, empowering them to take control of their health holistically. The content is accessible for all experience levels, ensuring inclusivity and engagement across a wide audience.
To focus our efforts we defined four pillars that serves as themes for all of our content. Anything we did had to touch on at least one aspect of these pillars.
Audiences
1. Homebuyers and Homeowners: Anyone who owns a home or is in the market for one.
2. Borrowers: Anyone with an urgent need for cash to fund a large purchase, renovation, or reduce debt.
3. Financial Learners: People seeking foundational knowledge to build their financial literacy and confidence.
4. Wellness Curious: Consumers who are interested in improving their health but aren’t fully immersed in the lifestyle yet.
Financial Wellness
For launch we kept the content related to the products the company is best known for: getting funds for a home, other loans, refinancing, and insurance. After more than 20 years in business, the company has built a reputation for expertise and trustworthiness in these areas, making it a reliable source of guidance for our audience.
We used real loan officers to answer the most common questions related to those services in short, plain spoken videos. Each video is designed to be easy to understand. Giving you clear, straightforward information without the jargon.
We subdivided the Financial Learners audience to first-time homebuyers, experienced home buyers, military personnel, and people 62 or older. I worked closely with a small brain trust of experts to develop our first set of questions.
Once the questions were finalized, I worked with writers to script each answer, making sure the messaging was clear and engaging. I was also present on set to direct the talent, providing guidance to capture the right tone and delivery. After filming, I oversaw the editing process to ensure that each piece met our standards and stayed consistent from video to video.
Examples
Why would I take put a personal loan?
How much can I get with a HELOC?
Personal Wellness
Including fitness videos in an app that also allows you to get a loan was the biggest leap to make as far as credibility. This is where the choice of exercise types became important.
Yoga, barre, and pilates all stimulate the vagus nerve through mindful movement and breathing, which lowers stress levels, improves mood, and enhances digestion and sleep. Strength training releases dopamine, lowers cortisol levels, improves sleep quality, and strengthens the body, providing both physical and mental resilience. These physical practices combined with meditation classes support overall well-being and long-term stress management.
Lastly, good nutrition plays a crucial role in stress management by providing the body with essential nutrients that support brain function and regulate mood. Additionally, proper nutrition can reduce inflammation, improve gut health, and support the body's stress response, making it easier to cope with daily challenges
Through the lens of stress management we were able to move into organizing our physical wellness content.
We worked with 26 different instructors to create our library of fitness videos. Our primary categories were Strength, Yoga, Meditation, and Nutrition, each divided into their own subcategories. We concentrated on the beginner levels but included more advanced classes for those that wanted a more intense training session.
We released two new videos each work day so filming was an ongoing effort. Each month I would schedule what categories we would film for that month, create the schedule for following month's releases, and oversee cuts as they came in. This yielded over 500 videos in just the first year.
Examples
Core & Cardio
Refill Your Cup Meditation
Launch Material with Dr. Deepak Chopra
We were thrilled to partner with Dr. Deepak Chopra, a renowned expert in holistic wellness, to create a series of exclusive content for the launch. In this collaboration, Dr. Chopra dove deep into the importance of meditation, sleep, nutrition, exercise, and happiness, providing invaluable insights on how these elements contribute to overall well-being.
His content not only educates users on the mind-body connection but also includes practical guidance on incorporating these principles into life. Dr. Chopra also filmed a collection of guided meditations, designed to help users reduce stress, improve focus, and enhance their mental and emotional health.
His well-being practices were taken from a long, wide ranging conversation and edited into small, bite-sized lessons. This partnership was limited to only the first year and will be retired by the end of 2024.
Examples
There are Many Reasons to Meditate
Surrender to the Moment Guided Meditation
Launch and Beyond
After months of planning, shooting, and editing we were able to launch the app in October 2023 with a kick off event and a live meditation session at the heart of Times Square. For the month after an interactive billboard was left up, inviting the 400,000+ people who visit Times Square every day to take a minute to address their personal well-being.
This was a massive undertaking. It took teams of people to wraggle all of this together and get it out the door. I couldn't have done this without the world class video production and stellar product design teams.
As feedback and user metric began to trickle in we started to plan the next phase of the Rate app will be. I stayed on to start this work, but Rate 2.0 will be its own case study down the line...