The Future Is What We Make It

Read the campaign story

Honeywell’s 2020 proxy statement identifies the launch of The Future Is What We Make It as part of its 2019 rebranding work. Creator portfolios describe the task as broadening an identity associated with thermostats into a more expansive technology story. The work included an anthem and films featuring employees explaining their contributions.

Sasha Shenoy’s portfolio documents a shared visual and tonal system and names the creative leadership team. The pfcproduces account describes the employee-led approach. These records support the campaign’s construction, not a claim that every featured innovation was commercially available or that the work changed public perception. The same platform’s later expressions remain one family.

Editorial interpretation: employees can give an abstract corporate ambition an accountable human voice. Instead of saying the company makes the future, a person can explain the specific problem they work on and why it matters. That move is useful only if the explanation remains concrete. A collection of impressive job titles or futuristic images may create scale without helping an audience understand the actual contribution or its current stage of development.

Editorial interpretation: an integrated system makes many employee stories feel connected without requiring identical personalities or delivery. The balance is between coherence and control. A campaign should not turn staff into scripted proof of universal enthusiasm, nor should it expose confidential work to make the film more interesting. Clear participation terms, technical review and honest distinctions between research, demonstration and deployed products are part of the creative design.

Ask employees to explain a bounded problem

Begin with what the person is trying to make possible and what their own contribution involves. Avoid broad prompts that encourage unsupported claims about transforming society. Give them room to use their own language, then check the explanation with appropriate technical reviewers. The result should make a capability more understandable without requiring the audience to accept authority merely because the speaker works for a large technology company.

Separate the development stages visibly

Mark whether an example is an idea, a prototype, a controlled demonstration or a commercially available application. These stages can all be interesting, but they support different conclusions. A future-facing campaign should not compress them into a single impression of present capability. Review the images as carefully as the words, because a realistic visual can imply deployment even when the narration is technically cautious.

Protect voluntary participation and useful difference

Recruit staff through an opt-in process and make refusal possible without career consequences. Explain publication, editing and reuse before recording. Preserve different viewpoints and communication styles rather than treating the brand system as a demand for identical enthusiasm. Employees should be able to correct factual errors and raise concerns about confidential material, especially when a personal story is being used to support a corporate repositioning. Include a review for accidental disclosure in the background of a scene, not only in the spoken explanation or planned script.

A small test for another brief

Proposed adaptation: create two employee-style explainers for a fictional non-sensitive scheduling tool, with adult volunteers describing a specific design problem and its current status.

Measure whether viewers understand the problem, the speaker’s contribution and the tool’s development stage. Compare the person-led version with a corporate narration, while checking whether warmth or credibility leads to exaggerated assumptions about availability, safety or performance.

Stop if participation feels compulsory, confidential work enters the story or viewers mistake an aspiration or prototype for proven deployed capability.

• Use invented work rather than confidential employer information.
• Agree participation, credit and reuse terms in advance.
• Label the prototype clearly and provide an accessible transcript.