HEALING FOR COMBAT-WOUNDED VETERANS
- Atomic Stories
- Video Production
- Copywriting
- Brand Strategy
We believe that as The Storied Future does well, we should help raise the tide for others. That’s why we lead brand, marketing, and storytelling pro bono for The Bar X Project—a nonprofit that reunites combat-wounded Marines who fought together—to promote healing through fly fishing.
Many veterans who have returned home from Iraq and Afghanistan struggle to smoothly transition into civilian life; and countless veterans choose suicide. To help address these challenges, we have produced a series of short films that celebrate their brotherhood, help their families understand the sacrifices they’ve made, and give these warriors an outlet to heal by telling their stories.
MINING ATOMIC STORIES
Marines tell stories. Lots of stories. Capturing those stories isn’t the challenge on these Montana fly fishing trips—the challenge is to do so organically, so the story telling can be part of the healing process. We scale down our productions, limit our interviews to a couple of hours at the end of each trip, and are honored every time a Marine trusts us with their story.
Chris’s service to others is his passion. Through telling combat veterans’ stories of sacrifice, Chris has grown incredibly and the vets in turn have healed through Chris’s unique ability to uncover multiple layers so the unseen is clearly apparent.”
MAJ FRED GALVIN
RETIRED COMMANING OFFICER – MARINE SPECIAL OPERATIONS COMPANY – FOXTROT
CHANGING THE FUTURE
We create these stories for The Bar X Project so that the Marines on these trips can experience healing through recounting their shared memories. We also create them to help their families and friends see and experience some of what they went through and hopefully be able to support them better. In the short film that follows, we told the story of the MARSOC 7, an elite force of special operators who were falsely accused of war crimes. For 12 years, the Internet was filled with inaccurate and harmful accounts; today, our story is the number one Google search result, pushing all of those other results down the page.
HITTING THE MARK
When it came time to create a new brand identity for The Bar X Project, we knew we needed to find an art director who had served in the Marine Corps. We struck gold with Ron Tapia, whose art career started while doing tattoos for his buddies back in his Marine Corps days. For this pro bono project, The Storied Future built out the strategy, and then Ron knocked it out of the park with a logo mark that speaks to both the heritage of the Marine Corps and the power of The Bar X Project’s mission.
1,001 WORDS
This is one of our all-time favorite photos from The Bar X Project and it was shot by our good friend Greg Sweney at Motofish. The Marine shown here had ‘Semper Fidelis’ tattooed on his arm, the Latin phrase for ‘Always Faithful, but the “Semper” was blown off by an Improvised Explosive Device in Afghanistan. He later lost his leg as well, but continues to be there for his brothers as they all navigate civilian life together.
