Please enter your email and website or LinkedIn to receive more information about our free and paid accounts.
Please enter your email address below and we’ll send you instructions on how to change your password.
After two days of successful meetings in Kansas City and St. Louis, Kayleen and I started our last Missouri day at Momentum. Momentum is a creative marketing agency with locations across the US and in Canada. We were excited for the review as we’ve worked closely with the St. Louis office of Momentum in the past—assisting on large productions and helping find photographers. It was great to finally meet our contacts in person and put a face to a name.
Momentum’s office was about 20 minutes from our downtown hotel, so we got up bright and early to head over for the 10 am meeting. There, we were greeted by art buyer Emily Beckett, who led us to a conference room with a V-shaped table. Twenty-two books later, we had everything set up and were ready for the creatives. Soon people we’d talked with many times over email/phone came to meet us and check out the books. The group really enjoyed Wesley Law‘s style—especially his leave behind image of kids at the beach. Jennifer Silverberg‘s iPad also caught some eyes while others enjoyed Brian Cummings‘ portraits, Rob Grimm‘s still life, and Adriana Mullen‘s food. Several Momentum creatives remarked on liking Alistair Tutton‘s leave behinds, especially one of a cow’s face. We had a diverse group of work on the table, including Jeffrey Lamont Brown‘s motion reel and David Arky‘s X-ray photography. Momentum seemed very happy with the selection and sent back friendly “hellos” to our fellow Wonderful Machine staffers.
After Momentum, we headed to Osborn & Barr, whose offices are a block away from the the Cardinal’s Busch Stadium. Osborn & Barr is the leading agricultural marketing firm in North America, which meant we got to show off a little something different at this review. One of their art directors led us through their loft style building to the only available space: a ping pong table. After a quick laugh, we got to work making best use of our space and set out books we felt were most appropriate for O&B’s client base. The lure of great photos and a few giant cookies soon brought creatives. Many were quick to compliment David Torrence‘s farm imagery, Lou Bopp‘s environmental portraits and Mark Katzman‘s industrial and animal photos. Another group favorite was Scott Ferguson for his quirky style and inventive portraits. Nate Luke also received nice words on his angler portfolio.
The review went well, with a good amount of O&B creatives stopping by. Several creatives commented on how Wonderful Machine would be a great resource for them, especially since they often have a hard time finding good agricultural stock images. One art director chatted with us about his past life as a Philly man and his continued love/obsession with Philly sports teams (which we commended him for, of course). Once all the books were looked and the cookies were dwindling, we said goodbye and headed out the door.
With a little time before our last meeting, Kayleen and I grabbed some lunch. After receiving a long list of St. Louis recommendations from Wesley Law, we were dismayed to realize we weren’t close to any of them. With just a little time, we stopped by the first place we saw: Rooster, a cafe, crepe and sandwich joint. Even though it wasn’t on Wesley’s list, we enjoyed our food and felt ready and refreshed for our final St. Louis stop.
After lunch, we made our way over to CheckMark Communications, the in-house creative/design agency for Nestle Purina. The creatives told us that they are starting to source/assign more photography in-house and were happy to look through the work. Naturally, we showed mostly animal photographers with each book getting at least one “aw.” Mark Katzman, Winnie Au, Grace Chon and Barbara O’Brien were instant favorites while Jonathan Chapman‘s Purina work for Colle+McVoy also garnered praise. The group seemed interested in Wonderful Machine’s services and made sure to take leave behinds and business cards to share with their team. It was a very “cute” review, with lots of puppy and kitten pictures and talk of our own pets at home. It was fun to be in a room full of dog and cat people like myself. Eventually though, all the work had been looked through and we had to be on our way. We said our goodbyes and loaded the car up one last time (thank goodness!) and headed to the airport. We were certainly ready to check the 200 pounds of books and get back to Philly with a slightly exhausting and highly successful trip behind us.
It was fun St. Louis and Kansas City! We hope to be back again!
Read more about our time in St. Louis and Kansas City.
Need help getting your portfolio in front of dream clients? Reach out!