One concept for an entire campaign: planning the 30th anniversary of CEMS

In the dark, a digital clock shows the time. The alarm goes off, and the cut matches that sound with a phone alarm. Outside, Maringá wakes up. A member walks through the door of a CEMS location, and the narration says: "Thirty years ago, Maringá woke up to a new movement." A few seconds of screen time carry three decades of a Maringá gym. I wrote this opening as part of an integrated campaign for CEMS's 30th anniversary, filmed by REC Mart. In this text, I explain how a single idea covered the film, teasers, making-ofs and radio, and how the production shot breakdown tied each slate to each piece.

CEMS: 30 years as a gym and swim school in Maringá

The story of CEMS begins in 1996, in Maringá, with four former judo athletes and the support of their parents. The first location opened on Rua Marcílio Dias, in Zona 3, and, according to the history text published on the official website, it still operates at the same address. In 2013 came the Jardim Imperial location. In 2016, the one on Avenida Gastão Vidigal. Today there are three locations in the city, and the brand presents itself as "the largest gym and swim school chain in Maringá".

For a writer, one fact jumps off the page and asks to become a scene: children's swimming starts "from 4 months of age", with the Gustavo Borges Methodology, according to the CEMS website. Imagine a baby learning to float in the same pool where the parents train. The house's mission says it in so many words: "Our mission is to inspire families to adopt an active and happy lifestyle". A brand with roots like these reaches 30 with a ready-made cast and an entire city as its setting.

Company anniversary campaign: the concept that ties all the pieces together

The campaign was named "CEMS 30 anos. O movimento nos conecta." (CEMS 30 years. Movement connects us.) The goal was to celebrate the three decades and reinforce CEMS as a place of movement, habit and bonds between generations. The audience brought together current members, former members and families in Maringá. The central idea treated movement as the thread that links people, families and the city over thirty years.

With the concept settled, the list of pieces looked like this:

• one main film of 1'30";
• one short version of 30";
• 15" teasers for social media, each with on-screen text and a call to action in the caption;
• 1-minute promotional making-ofs;
• 30" radio spots.

A campaign with this many scripts calls for a discipline I really enjoy exercising. Each piece has its own length, channel and audience, and all of them need to sound like the same brand at the same anniversary. The campaign's strongest solution was sound: in every piece, the sign-off is a deep breath followed by the sound of a dive. This sound carries CEMS's origin in the water and works even on radio, where there is no image to hold the memory. Someone who hears the spot in the car recognizes the same brand they saw on Instagram that morning.

A corporate video script in eight blocks

The main film, in the version that went into production, is organized in eight blocks. It begins with the clock and the dawn. It moves on to the small decisions: the shoelace, the treadmill, the dive, the parents adjusting their child's goggles. The narration follows this rhythm with short sentences: "Everything begins with small decisions. Getting up. Putting on your sneakers. Taking the first step."

Then comes the habit that becomes an achievement, with strength training and the member who finishes the lane and celebrates at the edge of the pool. The water gets an entire block, with water aerobics, a child jumping in, an underwater shot and the front crawl. A montage shows the growth across locations and activities. The block about bonds brings a couple who arrive together, children who head off to different activities and instructors who call members by name. The narration there says: "There were children who watched their parents train and found their own place at CEMS."

The climax is a building montage with every activity, up to the line that names the anniversary: "CEMS hit thirty." The sign-off closes in Maringá at dusk, with the facade lit up, the breath and the dive.

Production shot breakdown: every slate serving the whole campaign

Here is the point that matters most to anyone commissioning a campaign this size. Each script could call for its own shoot, its own shooting day and its own budget. The CEMS production shot breakdown organized everything into four capture blocks and a sequence of slates. Each slate indicates which pieces that image will be used in, and each set has an order of priority.

Think of the scene of the member finishing the lane: it can serve the long film, the 30" version, a teaser and a making-of. The crew arrives on set knowing what needs to come out of there first and where each shot goes afterward. This design only works when the script is born with reuse in mind. When writing the main film, I picture the cuts that will feed the teasers. When writing the teasers, I look for lines that fit in 15 seconds with on-screen text. When writing for radio, I think about the sound that will replace the image.

The film language also helps stitch the pieces together. The match cut between the old alarm and the phone opens the film and became the subject of the first making-of, which shows how the crew built that transition. The same device appears on screen and behind the scenes, and the audience follows the campaign as a story told in chapters.

Scriptwriter for a production company: the partnership with REC Mart

I came to REC Mart through a referral from Terra and Talita, friends in the field, and I am grateful to both of them to this day. Ton Dijan's production company has built a broad client portfolio, with a lot of experience alongside content creators and high-performance digital brands. When the first piece I wrote with them was approved on the first round, Ton opened the doors to the other projects, and CEMS was one of them. I hold enormous affection for that vote of confidence.

A campaign with this many pieces shows clearly how well the division of work between script and production functions. The script organizes the story, and REC turns each line into shot, light, sound and cut. Ton describes this partnership like this:

If you want to see the project gathered in one place, the CEMS section of the REC Mart case study shows the campaign alongside the other films we wrote together.

In the next article about CEMS, I describe the script's path between the first and second versions: the time travel that opened the campaign, what the feedback asked for and how the film found the real movement of Maringá's members.