My Uber driver waited in front of Alliance Center on a late October night in Buckhead, Atlanta. It was almost 11 p.m. on a Thursday, and I found the parking lot entirely empty when I descended from the Artistic Initiative Agency’s offices.
“A long day at work?” asked the driver as the car pulled off.
Almost instinctively, I gave him a friendly smile he could not see under my face mask.
“No,” I replied. “It’s just another normal day at work.”
The past month had been equally toiling for the Artistic Initiative Agency team. The marketing agency from Houston, Texas, had experienced extraordinary growth over the past year. After expanding from Houston into Atlanta, Georgia, the Artistic Initiative team had found no day of rest.
“What do you work on exactly?” uttered the driver with confusion in his eyes as he looked at me through the rear mirror.
The Uber driver’s follow-up question was almost inevitable. It was a question that had become frequent to me each night over the past weeks; still, I did not have a precise answer to it. In fact, how can one describe something that did not exist two years ago, a business model so young that it was barely learning how to walk?
Artistic Initiative Agency’s business model follows a premise as simple as it is intriguing: “turning CEOs and corporations into social media influencers.”
The agency creates personalized content for CEOs and companies that generates an audience on social media. Such an innovative proposal is a concept never seen before in social media marketing.
“What is happening in the world is that a whole new online marketing industry has been created,” said the founder of Artistic Initiative Agency. “I can confidently say that Artistic Initiative is leading this path.”
On a late Friday night, the founder and I sat inside the Artistic Initiative Agency’s Atlanta offices for an interview about his company’s revolutionary proposal. 21 floors below us, people crowded at the bar of Mission + Market in the lobby of Alliance Center, watching the 3rd game of the World Series between the Houston Astros and the Atlanta Braves. The founder wore a Texans football shirt proudly showing his Houstonian roots.
The founder had agreed to be interviewed with the sole condition that his name remained anonymous.
To that day, the founder continued to have a hard time wrapping his mind around the explosive growth of Artistic Initiative Agency over the past two years. What started as a one-person company from the founder’s residence in Houston had grown into a multi-seven-figure company with offices in Houston and Atlanta and a growing list of influential corporate clients.
Along the way, the founder and his team have had to write the handbook of an industry that did not exist before.
The notion of traditional online marketing centers around paid advertising and SEO work.
“No one ever considered social media presence to be a part of online marketing, but now social media is probably one of the strongest areas of online marketing,” said the founder.
As the founder explains, the work of Artistic Initiative Agency is a combination of content creation, press, networking, consulting, and social media management.
The agency’s team produces high-quality photography, cinematic quality vlogs, Instagram Reels, Tik Toks, commercial ads, and interactive videos for their clients’ social media.
Artistic Initiative’s portfolio of services also includes social media management; this service consists of designing a strategic rollout of content for their clients that generates the maximum online engagement.
“This is what people have coined as ‘the new Hollywood,’” said the founder. “We put our clients into a campaign and utilize the content we create, which resembles that of the influencer world, to build an audience and grow our clients’ social media presence.”
Secondly, Artistic Initiative Agency aids companies to increase their SEO in Google and acquire their verification in Instagram through online articles. The Artistic Initiative copywriting team creates features with imagery and description equal in quality to the video content that the agency produces. In return, such pieces help clients build brand credibility and obtain their blue check verification marks.
Obtaining a verification mark “allows companies to stand out from the crowd and their direct competitors in the industry,” said the founder.
Likewise, consulting and building relationships with clients is a crucial component of Artistic Initiative’s operations. The agency works hand in hand with each client, involving them in the creative process to understand the story they want to project to the world.
“Artistic Initiative is like a one-stop-shop for social media,” explained the founder. “We give you the brand layout, the content that you need, the commercial ads, the press, and the landing page for your viewers.”
The future of online marketing is social media. As millennials and generation Z consumers ascent their way through the social ladder, building a solid social media presence is becoming increasingly crucial to appeal to this growing generation.
Social media is transforming into the business card par excellence. The world is moving into a new era in which new generations of consumers utilize social media to inform themselves about companies and products. Thus, companies need to design an appealing Instagram and create quality content that reflects the image they want to transmit to the public.
The founder is enthusiastic about the future of the social media industry. Those companies that take the Initiative of investing in developing their social media presence will place themselves ahead of their competition. The founder foresees that the growing demand for social media management and content creation will lead more entrepreneurial creatives to create more companies like Artistic Initiative Agency.
Currently, large multi-billion companies have already recognized the ever-increasing need to establish a solid social media presence. Companies like Burger King and Arby’s set the example in this matter.
“The big players are already doing it, so the second layer of this growing movement is all of the companies that are next in the world,” said the founder.
Artistic Initiative Agency is expanding the social media strategy of a large corporation to a new market. The agency is making such social media branding approach accessible to seven-figure and eight-figure companies.
Likewise, an increasing number of CEOs understand the importance of branding themselves in social media. Influential figures like Gary Vaynerchuk set the example in this field.
As the founder explains, the next step for CEOs and entrepreneurs who built a sustainably successful company is to become thought leaders, consultants, or motivational speakers.
“If you want to guide other people on how to do what you have done, you need social media,” said the founder. “You need social media to show what you’ve built and that you know what you are talking about. Social media backs up your experience and validates that you can go on stage and motivate others.”
Over the past two years, Artistic Initiative Agency has set the foundations of a new industry that promises to revolutionize online marketing. The founder recognizes the role of Artistic Initiative as one of the guiding figures of an avant-garde movement.
Reflecting on his company’s success, the founder feels a sense of duty to aid other creatives to follow his steps and reap the benefits of the social media revolution. Having worked years ago filming weddings and other events, he knows the intricacies of making a living as a content creator. Thus, the founder and his team prepare to launch a consulting program to instruct creatives on contacting clients, drafting packages, organizing content, and other technical facets of running a social media company.
“I, as a creative, understand how difficult it is to make a consistent income just making photography, editing videos, or writing articles. It takes a collective of everything to grow in this industry,” said the founder. “That is the reason why we are rolling out a consulting branch of our company to teach other creatives the keys to building a successful social media company.”
At the end of our interview, I felt the determination and energy projecting from the founder’s eyes permeate every inch of the room.
Today, Artistic Initiative Agency continues to solidify its position as one of the leading social marketing agencies nationwide. The founder recognizes that he is venturing into previously unexplored territory. He feels fortunate to have the support of a talented creative team, helping him draw the map of this new industry.
“Every member of Artistic Initiative is a highly experienced expert on their respective fields,” concluded the founder. “Collectively, we are creating the systems and processes of a new form of social media marketing, of which Artistic Initiative is the blueprint.”
By Juan Sebastian Restrepo,
In association with Artistic Initiative Agency
