Back in February, we at Creative Concepts were scheduled to film a video for our client, Ouidad, better known to curly-haired fashionistas around the world as “the queen of curl.”

The video was supposed to be simple: a before-and-after interview with the winner of Ouidad’s “If These Curls Could Talk” contest, including a glimpse of her fabulous post-makeover ‘do, live from Ouidad’s New York City salon.

But we had one problem: the East Coast had just been buried by a blizzard.

In fact, the winner herself lived in Baltimore, which had just set a snowfall record.  Amtrak wasn’t running, the highways were shut down, and there was a very good chance the shoot would have to be canceled.

And then, miraculously, everything came together.

Trains and buses began running mere hours before the shoot was scheduled, and the winner arrived just in time…

… and with straight hair.

For those of you who don’t spend your lives in a hair salon, this is the equivalent of winning free tickets to a hockey camp and then showing up with a broken leg.  Whatever the camp intended to teach you, they suddenly realize they’ll have to heal you first.*

So Ouidad and her stylists set to work, not only to give their contest winner the curls of her dreams, but to help her understand why straightening her hair wasn’t the best idea in the first place.  We’re pretty sure their advice worked, because the contest winner was awestruck by her new look and her newfound understanding of how to best care for her curls.

The results?  See for yourself:

The lesson?  As we’ve mentioned before, live video shoots are all about being adaptable — even when time, weather and the video’s topic itself all seem to conspire against you.

So remember: in social media, there’s no such thing as a true negative.  Every stumbling block is really an opportunity for improvement, and another positive just waiting to happen — and when it does, you end up with an even better story to tell!

(Speaking of improvement, for more helpful haircare Q&As, visit Ouidad’s info-packed website.  If you’re not curly by nature, you’ll wish you were!)

* And speaking of hockey, enter this Facebook contest from Bigelow Tea — who is also our client — and you could win tickets to Wayne Gretzky’s hockey camp in 2011!  (But be careful about that broken leg.  Seriously.)