A Good Work Week: Thousands of Thanks + Carved in Stone
Just yesterday, right after I had helped feed the chickens behind my parents’ church, I saw more well-loved hens on my Instagram feed. No surprise, right? Of course I follow Vital Farms. But then I saw an IGTV video focused on the Vital Thanks, a one-time only special edition Vital Times, the tiny chicken newspaper I’ve had the honor of writing for 4+ years. And y’all. This IGTV story got me.
More than 3,000 thank you’s. More than 3,000 people taking the time to share their stories and their art and their appreciation and find a stamp and mail a letter in the middle of a pandemic. That deserves a quick behind-the-scenes look at how it happened.
From Vital Times to Vital Thanks
A Certified B Corp, Vital Farms has built its entire business on the stakeholder model, honoring the contributions of every stakeholder – from the hens to the investors. So when egg-straordinary demand for their pasture-raised eggs kept everyone working overtime, they reached out with an idea that was delightfully on-brand. They wanted to turn the Vital Times into a thank you note.
🍳 I thought Vital Thanks was a natural, but asking a client to change their masthead is a big ask. Not for this team - they were onboard immediately.
🍳 We moved into copy - for the thank you note, I suggested a “Mad Libs” style fill-in-the-blank would help people get started. The team was onboard.
🍳 We had lots of conversations about safety. Was it safe to ask people to mail in paper? Was it safe for the team to receive paper? (This was relatively early in the pandemic, and we were all learning.) We added the option to email a snapshot of the thank you’s to us to make everyone feel good.
And it worked! Of course, Vital Farms fans are family, but thousands of thanks? Amazing. And if that wasn’t enough…
Carved in Stone
Earlier this week, I was moderating an online Diversity and Inclusion forum. One of the participants posted about ConocoPhillips’ donation to establish a green space intended to bring the people of Bartlesville together. He quoted the words on the dedication plaque, and that’s when it hit me.
I helped write that. I helped write the words that are now carved into a wall!
“ConocoPhillips dedicates this space to the people of Bartlesville. We welcome the diversity of backgrounds, experiences, ideas and perspectives that contribute to our vibrant community, and trust that the bonds uniting us as family, neighbors and friends will grow ever stronger.”
This team effort crossed my desk in November. The company really wanted to be sure that its diversity and inclusion values were represented in the inscription, but the text being used felt very ‘of the moment.’
I wanted to be sure that the text we provided was relatively timeless - that it would be as meaningful to people fifty years from now as it is today. When I think about the incredible change in our country and our national conversations since this project began, I am gratified that my instinct was correct. The messaging is still relevant, and still beautiful. Kudos to ConocoPhillips for caring enough to support the project and the ideals behind it.
