Let me take you back to April of 2019.

At that point, we’d been preparing to launch our brand and content studio for about a month. Taylor and I took a buyout from our previous agency and had about one month of planning before officially launching on April 2. We announced our new endeavour with a gorgeous bus bench ad (I’m kidding, don’t believe everything you read).

There was plenty of uncertainty. At our previous agency, we’d worked with a team of six, with well-established relationships, industry partners, and, most importantly, lots of clients.

When we launched Something Great, we left all of that behind. Well, almost.

We did take one client with us, who was based here in Vancouver and whom our former business partner agreed would make more sense if we continued to provide the work for. The only problem there was our point of contact at the company (unbeknownst to us, of course) had been verbally abusing his employees.

We learned this the day we launched Something Great, and parted ways with the company immediately. So our only client disappeared on day one.

‍Not a great start. But hey, zero clients, one client, either way we had a lot of work to do.

Picking up jobs proved to be hard work. But all good things take time, as they should.

Our first project was a logo redesign for an insurance company. Then a friend and electrical contractor in Burnaby gave us some video and social media work. And we signed an ERP software company here in Vancouver to a long-term paid media deal, giving us a bit of breathing room and a space to prove our value and build some case studies.

The ball started rolling from there.

Building case studies, as boring as that sounds, was a key lever for our growth. Highlighting our ROAS for paid media clients, showcasing our web design efforts, and sharing our video work, social media, and search-first content results helped bring in new opportunities, both nationally and locally.

Taylor had an office in Denver, Colorado, while I continued to build our company here in Vancouver. We both quickly became focused on working with more clients in our respective cities, working with local companies like Mame’s Burritos and Nashoba in Denver, and Kinder Morgan and Coast Spas in Vancouver.

This was a dream for us. We truly do love knowing our customers, pitching and strategizing collaboratively, and meeting in person.

Then we started hearing rumblings about a pandemic. Bigggg screech.

March 2020 was a strange time to say the least. We’d just signed Dolphin Delivery to a social media and content creation contract, and at quite the time. The trucking industry become even more vital to the Canadian economy during the pandemic, and working with Dolphin proved to be an exciting and important opportunity for us. Maybe we would survive the pandemic after all.

Despite in-person meetings disappearing from our schedules, business ticked up for our marketing agency in 2020. New businesses were being born every day, existing businesses were changing their offerings to meet market demands, and industry leaders needed support. We saw high demand for our services right through 2021 and began working closer with some of our larger clients.

From 2022 onward, REW (Real Estate Works) became a huge partner for our agency. I went on to become their first-ever Director of Content in 2023, helping create and strategize marketing campaigns for both the company internally and its external partners. Taylor, meanwhile, has been busy creating custom content for brands across North America, running all social accounts for a national tequila brand, and filming everything from video courses to golf courses.

Now, as April 2024 rolls around, we find ourselves entering a new chapter, working with even more great local companies like 3 Dogs Brewing, Golf Kelowna, Elevated Pizza, Imperial Motorcycles, and Gemini Food Services, to name a few (watch for more marketing case studies in the near future).

We’ve always relied on a small team of employees and partners to help with excess work, but we’re now embarking on a new growth period, setting down roots in Port Moody with our first physical office location since the pandemic. The time feels right to grow our studio, so if you know someone with a passion for design or a knack for writing scroll-stopping copy, make sure to send them our way.

If you’re interested in working with Something Great, we’re the brand & content studio you can trust to get the job done. We’d love to help tell your brand’s story.

Cheers to the next five.

-Justin