We Choose Cyprus

Published in

HR Innovate

4 min readJul 24, 2020

Earlier this week, I released a new short video titled, “We Choose Cyprus” on several social media platforms.

I really liked Kat’s language when she shared it…

“Simple: home is where the heart is, what doesn’t our resilient, little island have to offer? We choose Cyprus, every time.”

The Backdrop.

As we all know, it’s been a tough year. As I am sat here at halftime of the The 20/20 Debacle Show, I’ve looked back and thought… it’s tough… but I am so glad I am here in Cyprus with my family. I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else.

The Story-line.

So, as we began to transition out of the COVID crisis, I thought that this concept could be a sentiment we can all share in.

Christos, our HR Administrator, concurred. Together we mocked up a plan to make a new little video to express our gratitude. That weekend, as he was out with his family, he shot some footage. In our plan, we definitely didn’t want the footage shot on HD but on a phone. We wanted the video to be real. He came back with a nice memory and some great footage.

The Copy.

I watched the footage and edited it down to about a minute. From there, I wrote some of my best copy. It was an inspired moment and from the heart.

“It’s not the largest country in the world, but does it really have to be? We have everything we ever really wanted… Sun and Beach, Friends and Family. Through the best of times, and yeah — also through the difficult… and we understand that to succeed, we are all in this together.

At HR Innovate, we believe that you aren’t looking for just any job. We believe you deserve a job that fits your lifestyle… that you deserve the best. That’s why, at HR Innovate, we choose Cyprus… and we hope you choose HR Innovate.”

The Audio.

Normally for audio, I go straight to Bobby at Zen Production Studios in Nicosia, Cyprus because in my opinion, he has the most experience and the best set up in town.

But for this video… I wanted a more homemade vibe, so I decided to record the audio in my personal studio. I started by just using my voice.. hard no. Then I asked Despina, one of our HR & Recruitment Consultants, to give it a Greek Cypriot feeling… it was good but the audio recording quality was terrible.. so I brought in my board, set up some mics, normalized and compressed it and took a backing track from YouTube to top it off.. I liked it.

The YouTube track would cause problems later because, although, I was under the impression I had the license to use the music.. Facebook gave me a hard time saying that the audio would be muted in some locations. I have yet to figure that out, but it is something I need to understand better as I look to the future.

Delivery & Reception.

Out the gates, I had a tough time with this one. In retrospect, I guess I always do. First was the audio track issue mentioned above. Next, I tried promoting it on Facebook as my first campaign of 2020. Facebook rejected it. Turns out the Special Advertising categories now include Employment and include items that are not job posts… I hadn’t marked it as a Special Category for Employment because I personally didn’t think it was an employment post, but more a post about us. Facebook felt differently. A flash of the 2020 political campaigns in the US crossed my mind — but I’m not in the mood so I moved on.

As I write this, I am only a day in, but several colleagues have contacted me and let me know they thought I hit the right tone with this one. That’s a good feeling.

As this video plays out to its natural conclusion, I have swiftly moved on to the next items on my agenda… but it was fun.

Sometimes You Just Have to Stand Naked

At the best of times, I like to consider myself a bit of an artist. When I was in school studying, David Bartholomy (my writing teacher, RIP Bart) would tell me that if my work does not stir an emotion, good or bad, or somehow provoke an action, it was nothing more than an amusement to be forgotten. He wouldn’t even give me a grade. He would just write, This is an amusement… at the top of my papers and hand them back as though he never saw it.