In the age of fake news, wouldn’t you know it—irony of all ironies—it’s up to advertising to tell the world the truth. But, truth be told, sometimes reality has to be decorated so that it projects properly to the wider world.

So when we in the communications industry find a beautiful, truthful event such as President Sian Beilock’s inaugural address as President of Barnard College, we owe it to the world to share the spirit of the moment. But to communicate not just what was said but also what was felt in the room you sometimes have to dress it up a little.

That’s precisely what we did when we took short snippets of President Beilock’s speech and adorned them with imagery and music. Here’s one example.

There was enough depth in the speech for us to create four additional episodes on various topics that would be meaningful to alumni and supporting foundations. And we carved out several more messages into byte-size pieces for distribution via social media — proving our maxim that if truth is to propagated in an environmentally sound way, it should be 100% recyclable.

The first video, introduced on Giving Day, produced wonderful results while doing the original event justice. Why? Well, Picasso may have explained it best when he said: “Art is a lie that tells the truth.”