NEWS
Factory CEO Scott Mellin Says Denver 'Wasn't An Accident' as Choice for Agency Headquarters
A post, titled An Ad Agency In Denver?, appeared in Marketing Daily a few days ago written by Factory Design Labs CEO Scott Mellin. In it, he justifies all the reasons Factory chose to set up shop in Denver — which caught us a little off guard, since the agency's been around for 15 years since 1997 here in town. He says it's an advantage "to locate outside the typical ad agency cities," but also talks about the drawbacks of being headquartered in Denver.
"The biggest challenge to running an agency in Denver is that you don’t mingle with dozens of global brands on a daily basis. We have to work extra hard to find clients, because we don’t have next door-neighbor relationships with large global lifestyle brands. And our biggest enemy is the misperception that Denver is not in the center of the ad-industry action — which limits our reach with potential brands and employees."
We'd love to know why he felt compelled to write the piece after so many years of the agency being a Denver staple.
Comments
And all this time, I thought it was because this was where founder Jonas Temple lived at the time.
Clearly there was a grander plan.
I'd chalk this up to agency PR, trying to drum up more new biz.
Heh. Yeah. Jonas was making rave flyers in his mom's house until he met someone who worked at Copper that offered to let them design a website for them. He then hooked up with Jeff Giarraputo to actually make it and grew slowly from there. There was no plan for creating an ad agency, let alone a strategy to being in Denver.
Serious looking guy.
There was no grander plan. Wouldn't it been great if he'd have told the truth.
Trevor -not verified- got it right. It's amazing how things for Jonas and the founding crew of FDL manifested in a direction that originally did not have the so-called master plan implied. -E
This is a strange release. The genesis and history of this shop is well known by most in our community. FDL - can you guys explain what you were going for?
they are trying to get their name out because new agencies in denver are taking their business
^ this
Does this mean Scott Melin will be visiting Denver sometime?
Yep- Right on Evil E and Trevor!! :) Factory actually got it's name from Andy Warhol's Factory- a place were artists, musicians and good people came together to create. Factory was actually the name of the company that yes, produced party flyers, and the parent name was Temple/Keil...which was quickly dropped as Factory rose. Eric Trujillo was part of that beginning effort. :) Steve Whittier/K&H was actually one of our first clients.
There is truth to some of that- being about Colorado. Businesses like Copper, etc. were going to other states to hire their creative, because at the time, a lot of design shops were pretty stale here- we were different. The Copper work came after we produced materials for a first time event at Copper Mountain called BoarderCross, which has grown into what we see today. Jeff G, brought the Copper Website and Adam Sandler. A lot of great people contributed to the growth of Factory, first as a design shop, then later as an agency. Great people, working hard and playing hard.
We saw trends of the youth culture/music/outdoor first hand because WE WERE the market and that's how business came and how we went after it... Factory grew relationships with people.
Last time I checked there are still a lot of great "global" brands here in Colorado -maybe just not the ones that Scott is interested in.
Melin is a massive failure.
Hiring Blake was their President's Tracy Mcginnis's biggest mistake. She should be fired.
This company was, is and always will be a local design shop with little to no conceptual brand building ability.
the snake
the oil
the clogs
When you have to talk about how relevant you are, you are not.
Mellin is scared that he's losing business to better agencies and he's trying to spin the location of the agency into a conscious effort. Which we all know, it wasn't.
So transparent, what a dope.
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