Becoming BOSS: The Parody Video

Originally published on LinkedIn

Welcome back to the second installation of Becoming BOSS, a behind the scenes look at how the RIVA MarCom team is challenging business as usual in the GovCon marketing space. If your first question is, what is BOSS? Please hop over to The Origins Story and get up to speed on the Bosses For BOSS campaign, how it came to be, and why we’re here. Today’s installation covers the parody side of the campaign, something we honestly never planned on sharing externally (spoiler: I’m so glad we did).

 In the origins story, I took you on a walk with my dog Zooey which is where I dreamt up the original concept of Bosses for BOSS. After over a year in protest, we wanted to play on the concept of readiness as a key element in the BOSS marketing campaign. This idea originated during a discussion with my own boss who wanted to find a way to demonstrate to PTO that RIVA had been using its time wisely– instead of sitting around waiting for the protest to resolve, we’d been working behind the scenes to ensure we were READY to deliver day one. I’ll venture to say Jeff Anderson’s interpretation of RIVA getting ready for BOSS probably looks a whole lot different than mine...

On my walk with Zo was a scene unfolding in my brain of famous pop culture bosses, Michael Scott, Leslie Knope, Tony Soprano, Bruce Springsteen, etc., arriving for their first day of work at USPTO. The original tagline would have been something like, we hired some BOSSES while we were waiting…super short, meant to generate a quick laugh for our internal team and nothing more.

I wanted to host a video shoot of the RIVA team in front of the Madison building because the PTO campus in Alexandria, VA is iconic. We would be able to make the visual connection to our new BOSS contract clear without needing to spell it out in the video, which again was never intended for external distribution. The other reason I wanted to shoot at PTO was to capture as much content as possible on location for future marketing materials, but we’ll dig into this in the next installment of Becoming BOSS, promise.

When we sat down to storyboard the video it was clear it was going to be a little more complicated than I originally thought to convey the BOSS concept. We went back and forth on what icons would be mainstream enough for people to get the references. (This Jersey Girl LOVES Bruce Springsteen, but would that make any sense to people under 50 outside of New Jersey?) We spent time talking about if Tony Soprano was too violent and had any memorable quotes, we could use that would be funny and not terrifying. We tossed around ideas from shows that were getting to be more niche and less mainstream. For a while we settled on a blended The Office meets Parks and Rec cast – but this to got confusing. Everyone knows The Office jingle, but if we used too many Office references the Parks and Rec characters would make less sense.

At some point, the it’s happening meme entered the conversation.

We pivoted and never looked back. We ended up scrapping all the other boss references and focused on creating our own episode of The Office to tell the story of the wild journey we had been on from initial award to protest, to protest again, to final award. I would be remiss if I didn’t take a moment to thank my incredible team for their persistent creativity and uncanny ability to translate whatever crazy ideas pop into my head into something even better than I had ever hoped for.

Over the next few weeks, we conned a few people, myself included, to sit for an office style interview and let the cameras roll. Major kudos to our GWAC manager Joe (a fellow Jersey native) who graciously volunteered to be Bruce Springsteen on a moment’s notice. He will probably never say yes to any of my requests again– but it was worth it.

We launched the video at our Partner Kick Off Meeting–which was an instant hit– everyone wanted to know when we were posting the video so they could share it with their networks. Again, we put this video together solely for internal use, to make light of the situation with our new BOSS partner community. We weren’t planning on posting it as we didn’t anticipate the humor or message would translate to anyone who hadn’t been following the BOSS saga. Given the initial reception we double checked copyright laws and hit publish.

You can check out the full Bosses For BOSS Office Parody video here. As a bonus we put together a blooper reel, because you should never waste a good opportunity to continue the laughter.

The best part of this Bosses for BOSS journey so far is the amount of laughter it has generated. I love having the opportunity to laugh with my colleagues every day. I’m truly grateful for everyone’s willingness to participate and run with the concept. We’re forging new territory here in the GovCon marketing space–it’s exciting and terrifying. I appreciate this type of campaign wouldn’t work just anywhere. At RIVA we’re willing to take risks and push boundaries to differentiate ourselves from the pack which is what makes my job so cool. 

I hope you get a laugh out of our Bosses for Boss videos. Next time I’ll dig into our on-site photo and video shoot at PTO campus and how we think about different layers of marketing content.

Until next time, keep being a BOSS.