JUSTIN LUND
Creative Director & Brand Storyteller
50 Years First for Your Success | United Bankers Bank (2025)
Once upon a time, the little guys took on the big banks, and they won.
Overview
CLIENT: United Bankers’ Bank
ROLE: Director, Producer, Storyboard Artist, Videographer, Editor, Motion Graphics Designer
PROJECT TYPE: Brand Documentary / Legacy Film
PRODUCTION SCOPE: Multi-state interviews, archival storytelling, custom graphics, full post-production
PRIMARY GOAL: Preserve and communicate the organization’s founding story for its 50th anniversary
The Challenge
United Bankers’ Bank had a story its founders had wanted to preserve for years.
The organization began with a bold idea: small-town community bankers needed a way to protect their independence and compete against larger national banks without losing the local relationships that defined their work. What started as an idea among community bankers eventually became the nation’s first bankers' bank.
The challenge was turning decades of institutional history, executive memories, regulatory hurdles, business pivots, and personal reflections into a documentary that felt clear, emotional, and watchable.
This could not just be a corporate timeline. It needed to feel like a real story.
The Strategy
The creative strategy was to build the film around a narrative arc: origin, conflict, risk, survival, growth, and legacy.
Working from a rough historical script, I storyboarded the documentary as a 30-minute brand film that would explain not only what United Bankers’ Bank became, but why it had to exist in the first place.
The story centered on the tension between community banks and larger financial institutions. Community bankers wanted to remain independent, serve their local towns, and avoid relying on competitors for critical correspondent banking services. That tension gave the film its emotional spine.
The goal was to make banking history feel human: small-town bankers, shared risk, regulatory battles, leadership transitions, economic crises, expansion, and a mission that continued across generations.
My Contribution
I led the film from story development through final delivery.
Over the course of more than a year, I traveled across three states to film interviews with bank presidents, marketing leaders, executives, and people connected to the organization’s founding and evolution.
I directed interviews, captured supporting visuals, shaped the story structure, and built the full edit from beginning to end. In post-production, I combined executive interviews, public domain archival footage, custom data infographics, music, pacing, and visual design to create a polished 30-minute film.
The final documentary traced United Bankers’ Bank from its original founding idea through major turning points, including early uncertainty, regulatory challenges, the farm crisis, leadership changes, product innovation, geographic expansion, and the organization’s ongoing commitment to community banking.
The completed film premiered at a 50th anniversary gala at the Mall of America in Minnesota.
What I gained
This project reinforced that institutional history becomes powerful when it is treated like human history.
The strongest parts of the story were not just dates, milestones, or banking services. They were the moments of risk, belief, pressure, and shared purpose. The film worked because it gave the organization’s history a heartbeat.
It also strengthened my experience leading long-form brand storytelling from concept to completion. The project required client trust, executive interviews, documentary structure, multi-state production logistics, archival storytelling, motion graphics, and emotional brand positioning.
Most importantly, it showed me how to take a complex organization with decades of history and turn it into a clear, compelling story people actually want to watch.
