What We Do Here – A Message From A.J.

Greetings again! It is an exciting time here at PCM, and I am hard at work buttoning up the website, and working on my first promotion. On that note, I feel it is important to address what I am trying to accomplish here, and what I hope you can get out of working with me.

I think we have all had the experience of consuming media that has left a lasting impact on us in some way. Perhaps it was a scary movie, that kept you up the following night, or a romantic comedy that brought a tear to your eye. Maybe, like me, you were so enamored with how words, sounds, and images could impact the way people felt, you were driven to create content yourself.

For most of my career, I was a company man. I felt lucky to have the chance to work with clients and create products that reflected the level of professionalism that I had come to expect of myself. I went to work every day content that I was making a difference not only by improving in my own abilities, but by providing a product that educated audiences, and helped them in their careers.

But eventually I noticed something about the content that we were creating. The e-learning space is unique in the sense that many organizations require a specific amount of ‘course hours’ to obtain a certification. This presented a unique problem. Instructors were being forced to stretch lessons that didn’t really need to be prolonged, in the interest of providing the proper amount of time for their certifications to be valid coursework. The end result more often than not would be dull with a capitol D. Years later, I graduated to producing content using SCORM, and WordPress based LMS systems, and an idea started to take hold in my mind.

The process of creating a structured syllabus, with small lessons, games, quizzes, and relevant content played so much better with audiences, that it had revolutionized e-learning before my very eyes. “If this method has become the preferred way to disseminate information to viewers,” thought I, “than why not apply these same methods to the marketing and entertainment space?”

It isn’t a novel idea, we have seen this device used to great effect in the entertainment industry in films like Pulp Fiction, Magnolia, Crash, and many more. We have seen episodic content in advertising, notably with Progressive Insurance, and GEICO (in fact their ‘caveman’ ad campaign even generated an ill-fated series which was perhaps doomed by betraying the short-form premise, and relegating it to sitcom format). In my opinion, ‘bite-size media’ is the preferred model for the modern age, and it is currently underutilized.

And Thus I gave birth to Picture Canyon Media (PCM). I wanted to transcend the confines of solely creating educational content, and share my insights on how to capture and keep people’s attention across a variety of applications.

And so I started out on the long and arduous process of creating something from nothing. If you are still reading at this point, I applaud your commitment, and this is my offer to you: A free media assessment and consultation about how we can deploy media strategically to suit your marketing, education, or entertainment goals. I hope you will take me up on this, just send me a message on the Contact Form, or call me at (720)-507-8331.

Thank you always

A.J. Diederich