Written by Annabella Ng, Photo by Alex Khaw

Pre-production

This is a two-part series showcasing the lives and daily struggles of Stamford Catering employees.

Unless you’ve been a delivery driver yourself, you don’t really know the sort of difficulties they go through. It is only after the making of this video, did we realise the difficulties drivers endure day after day. We hope to enlighten people the toil these drivers go through and recognise their efforts.

As the title suggests, the concept of each video is how important each employee is to his or her family. Building on the concept provided by We Are Solstice, a digital agency, we created the storyboard with Daud’s wife narrating the video. Ensuring the video remains personal and authentic; we thought Daud’s wife narrating in Malay language is the most fitting.

The video begins with an introduction of Daud and his daily routine as a delivery captain for Stamford Catering. It continues with Daud going about his deliveries when a couple of playful children knocked his food over right outside the client’s home.

Keeping his composure, Daud promised the client he’ll be back in an hour with fresh food. He rushes back to central kitchen and makes it back in time to the client’s place. Daud’s wife is finally revealed towards the end of the video when he returns home to her warm welcome.

The video ends with Daud’s current health after a bypass surgery two years ago. Stamford Catering has made arrangements to allow Daud to continue working in the company given his heart condition.

Production

Our biggest challenge during production is making sure Daud and the rest of the staff involved appear candid on-screen. We didn’t want to engage professional actors to play Daud or the staff of Stamford Catering; again, to ensure the video remains personal and authentic.

Mother Nature was another challenge for us – it rained on and off throughout the day of filming and it was an arduous task to film in the rain, but we’re thankful to have managed it in the end.

Social Media Reach

In this technology age, social media is probably more effective than conventional marketing mediums, and if a company does not have the targeted marketing on various social media platforms, however great a video will be wasted.

The video garnered a total of more than 161,000 views on Facebook, with almost 340 comments, many of which are positive and thanking the staff of Stamford Catering for their dedication and hard work.