Nov 29 2012
If you’ve seen from our Twitter and Instagram posts, we are currently at Cincinnati’s Bold Fusion event at the Music Hall, and just had the pleasure of sitting in on a presentation by Ben Crawford, one of the owners of Epipheo, which he describes as a combination of a communications, PR, and advertising agency.
Ben’s partners got their big break when they created an informational video on Google Wave. Google had tried to advertise the product with a one hour and 20 minute video, but Epipheo did the same thing, but better, in 2 minutes. Once they posted it on YouTube, Google contacted them 8 times by the next morning, and Epipheo was basically born. Today, they have over 100 employees, 2 offices (in Cincinnati and Portland) and are creating over 200 videos at a time. Their clients include Google, NBC, Microsoft, Facebook, MTV, and more.
What Ben wanted us to take away from the presentation is that it’s important to not just focus on the business side of things – it’s also important to focus on the story. When they created Epipheo, it was just 4 friends with no formal training in marketing or advertising.
But the reason they succeeded is that they realized they needed an important vision statement. They asked themselves “What do we care about?” and the answer was Truth, Story, and Love, which ended up becoming their slogan. As Ben said, they were already doing this before getting paid for it, so if they wanted the business to succeed, they had to continue with what they were passionate about.
According to Ben:
So what have the results been of this small media start up? Epipheo now has over 700 clients, with projects involving video, print, web, retail experiences, and more. They also recently launched a content channel, and have had tremendous feedback from clients and fans all around the world.
It was a really incredible presentation, and Ben did a great job of explaining why he does what he does, and encouraging the audience to do think about why they do what they do.
The main thing you should walk away from after reading this blog post, (or if you were lucky enough to attend Bold Fusion and hear the presentation) is that you have to remember not to get lost in just the business and money side of things. It’s also important to stop and think about what you’re doing and why you’re doing it. If you walk through life and go to your job every day with a purpose and with an idea of how you want to effect people that day, you’re sure to feel like you are doing something meaningful.
Stay tuned for our recount of Guy Kawasaki’s upcoming presentation too. We’ll be posting it in the next couple of hours! (You can now view the blog post on the 10 Steps to Enchantment by Guy Kawasaki here.)
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