Honoring the Service of the Michigan National Guard

Honoring the Service of the Michigan National Guard

As part of the celebration of 35 years of MessageMakers, we're telling the stories of 35 great projects throughout our history. This is one of them.

MessageMakers producer Tom Lietz holds the award for 'A Commitment to Serve,' produced for the Michigan Department of Military and Veterans Affairs and the Michigan National GuardLife has never been easy for those who serve in the armed forces and their families. Stress, danger, and fear are common experiences. But the experience has become even more challenging in the past decade or so.

MessageMakers was honored in 2003 to extend its work with the Michigan Department of Military and Veterans Affairs and the Michigan National Guard to producing a video about what it was like to be in the Michigan National Guard, “A Commitment to Serve.”

“This was all kind of post 9/11, where that was changing, where people were on longer deployments, families were under increasing amounts of stress,” explains Tom Lietz, senior video producer for MessageMakers. “It was a good chance to be authentic and tell a story that was real and sometimes hard but hopefully truthful, that would show people what they were all about.”

The clients were very pleased with MessageMakers' efforts. The state public affairs officer had this to say:

“On behalf of the men and women who proudly serve our state and nation in the Michigan National Guard and Department of Military and Veterans Affairs, it gives me great pleasure to extend our thanks and gratitude to the staff of MessageMakers, who have contributed immeasurably to the public’s understanding of the Michigan National Guard and units stationed at Selfridge Air National Guard Base.”

Additionally, we got two awards for our work for these clients: Gold in the 2003 Service Industry Advertising Awards, and (more meaningfully) a Michigan National Guard Minuteman for our video production service.

“He stands proudly in our lobby,” Lietz says.