The Fuel Behind our Creative Direction
Samuel O’Connell, our Creative Director, has had a very non-traditional trajectory here at Coal Creative. He was first invited to complete a one-off video project based on a recommendation of our first employee Matt, who he has a 10+ year collaborative history with. At the time, he was freelancing in the realm of social media and website management, and video production.
“I got a small taste of the developing culture, saw the potential of my involvement and claimed the corner of Matt’s desk as my own,” Samuel said of his first few weeks. “I started to insert myself into client meetings, heavily pushing the concept and value of video production, while balancing freelance work and working nearly full-time at a startup I had co-founded with Matt,” he continued. After being challenged to “Make yourself full time” by Coal Creative CEO, Holly, Samuel ended his freelance commitments and focused fully on working to help Coal Creative grow into the award winning video production team that it is today. “Having Sam take that leap and dedicate his time, energy, and creativity to Coal Creative and our team was an absolute game changer,” Holly shared. “From early on, he aligned with the vision and was really monumental in developing our existing company culture. Sam is a storyteller at heart. Take that combined with his genuine passion for our clients, his upward trajectory with Coal Creative was eminent from the very beginning.”
In 2019, Samuel was promoted from Production Manager to Creative Director. “As someone who has nearly 15 years experience in Marketing and Storytelling, it was a very natural transition into shifting my focus from exclusively video, to coordinating all of the teams, across the variety of services offered by Coal Creative.” Samuel stated. “When we meet with a client, it’s really important for me to understand the goal of their marketing efforts. I then translate those goals into videos, social media posts or ads, blogs, website efforts and more,” he continued.
Now, in 2020 Samuel is excited to collaborate with the team and our ever-growing lists of happy clients. “I like to call marketing “Storytelling” and it’s incredibly rewarding to accomplish the goals and missions of our clients. We’re a boutique, relationship based firm, and if we aren’t as invested in our collaborators success as they are, it simply wouldn’t work.”
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