CASE STUDY
Morris Group International
A magazine cover, a corporate film for 28 divisions, and the CEO interview that started it all
Summary
In March 2024, The Wholesaler put our photography of Morris Group International’s CEO on its cover, alongside a multi-page feature co-written by the magazine and MGI’s VP of Marketing.
We produced the two-day shoot behind it, from location to post: the photography, the filmed CEO interview, and the Chasing the Dream video series MGI released on its website. The product renders in the feature were ours too.
It’s one chapter in a relationship that began in 2021 with a filmed interview of MGI’s CEO — a project that became an eighteen-minute film and a fifteen-part series still generating usable footage today. Since then we’ve produced work for 15 of the group’s manufacturing divisions.
The situation
Morris Group International is a family-owned manufacturing group: 28 divisions, eight global sales and distribution locations, more than 2,000 employees, over 75 patents, and 2.5 million square feet of manufacturing, office and warehouse space. Third generation, privately held, and deliberately so.
Companies like that have a story that doesn’t fit in a product catalog. The reason a specifier trusts a Murdock fountain or an Acorn sink has as much to do with how the group is run as with the fixture itself — and none of that is visible from a spec sheet.
A self-produced film only proves so much about the people who made it. A trade publication choosing to put your CEO on its cover is a different kind of evidence, and it’s the kind a specifier, a rep, or a distributor is more likely to believe.
In March 2024, the relationship produced a trade magazine cover story that put our photography and renders in front of the wholesalers, reps, and specifiers who read the trade press.
The original 2021 interview is still generating usable footage today, and Without Limits still runs on every division website.
400
reps and C-suite at the Without Limits premiere
Results
1
trade magazine cover, earned
15
manufacturing divisions served
What we learned
A leader’s time is the scarcest thing in this kind of work.
Booking a CEO is harder than booking a crew, a stage, or a location. So we scope these shoots to produce as much as one sitting can carry — the long film, the short pieces, the material that gets recut two years later for something nobody has thought of yet.
That is why we shoot brand interviews the way we do: properly lit, multi-camera, and covered from angles we may not need today. It costs almost nothing extra on the day, and it is the difference between one video and a decade of usable material.
Client
"In the past 22 months, Penny & Pound has delivered Morris Group International dozens of top-quality videos, animations, renderings, photography, and illustrations for many of the 28 divisions and brands that comprise Morris Group International. Adam and his team are pros in working towards and delivering what you need, even under severe deadlines."
Charles White
Vice President of Marketing, Morris Group International
What we made
Chasing the Dream
The Wholesaler’s March 2024 cover story profiled Donald E. Morris and the group he leads. The magazine chose it for the cover. The feature itself was co-written by the magazine’s Ruth Mitchell and MGI’s VP of Marketing, Charles White.
Without Limits
A corporate identity film covering the group as a whole — 28 divisions across drainage, plumbing fixtures, fire protection, safety and water controls. One narrative for an organization that had never been presented as a single thing.
It premiered in January 2024 to a room of 400 representatives and C-suite guests, and now runs on every division website.
My Legacy Is Not Extinction
Neither of these was the first thing we made for them. The first job, in late 2021, was a candid two-day interview with the CEO about the company’s founding principles and where it was heading.
That shoot became an eighteen-minute film and a fifteen-part series, sent to every employee and representative as part of a physical mailer — and we’re still pulling usable footage from it years later.
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