February may be our shortest and sweetest month, but that didn’t stop our research and outreach teams from reaching record heights. From connections with The North Face to Prudential, three meetings in NYC, a total of 1389 emails and 1287 calls – we made our mark this February.
Agencies: Alex, Matt, and Julian were our trio on agencies this month. Matt started off by researching NYC’s top agencies and cleaning up our bounced email list. Matt also set up a meeting with Prudential Financial and had a great connection with John Kilpatrick at Progressive Content who said:
I’m very familiar with Wonderful Machine and have used you to source international photographers on a fairly regular basis for a few years. In fact, I used WM on three occasions in the last Month finding guys in Germany and Australia.
In researching NYC’s top agencies, Matt began by sorting through 500 ad agencies that look for quality photography and that outsource their production. Part of his process is to strike a balance between large agencies, and smaller boutique agencies that are on the rise. Matt was able to connect with Jason Reynolds, owner of a small agency in Minneapolis, Basic Medium. Matt set up a call with Jason, our Executive Producer Jess and himself, where they chatted about each other’s needs and capabilities, establishing a relationship with Jason for future projects. In between his time out on shoots, Alex managed to make a dent in updating our database. During his outreach, Alex was able to recommend six of our photographers to Amy Marinari at Kantor Wassink who was looking for photographers with a gritty/street style to do a shoot in Grand Rapids/Detroit. Alex also recommended four photographers to Andy Huntingdon at JWT Cheethambell who was looking for a food photographer for a fish client in Norway. Alex was also able to set up a meeting with Lizzi Weinberg at NAIL Communications for March. Julian finished up agency outreach strong, scoring a production call with Rachel Crain at Team One in LA. He also had a great conversation with Sara Rosario of Pulp + Wire regarding our videographers and our stock tool. This trio was able to add a total of 149 agencies to our database, they sent 506 emails, made 662 phone calls and connected with 75 of those clients (with phone conversations or email correspondence).
Brands: Julia and Pat spearheaded our brand research and outreach this month. Julia added 56 new companies and has been focusing on updating contacts to include in-house marketing departments at major brands. She’s been honing in on the Fortune 100 Best Companies, as well as Philadelphia-based companies. A few of Julia’s notable connections include David Burnell, marketing coordinator at the Vermont Department of Tourism & Marketing, Dan Bailin, group strategy director at The VIA Agency and a meeting with The Philadelphia Union. Pat topped all of our producers sending out a whopping 530 emails and 361 phone calls! From all that hard work he was able to set up a meeting for our Executive Producer Craig Oppenheimer to fly out to San Francisco to meet with Brandon Baker at The North Face, plus another meeting with Aramark. He has a call on our calendar with Anush Davtian of Finn Partners in NYC to discuss a potential project plus a great response from Jeff Samaripa at Keen who said:
Hey Pat, Thanks for reaching out. I don’t have an immediate need, however, I would like to stay in touch. I think the Wonderful Machine business model is interesting, and I could see the need arising to engage a shooter, or production crew.
Publications: Meli was our productive lone ranger in publication this month. But don’t let her solitude fool you, she’s a woman out for business. In preparation for our next portfolio event, Meli did a combination of research for brands and agencies in New York that are fashion-focused. One of Meli’s goals has been to expand our Asian client list to yield better connections for our U.S. and international photographers, so she did research on Asian publications. Her investigations led to a connection with Gillian Nadel of Edipresse Media in Hong Kong. The two discussed hiring European and U.S.-based photographers for fashion, jewelry, home & garden stories, plus hiring local photographers for portraits, cover stories, food and drink, and restaurants. They even talked about doing our first ever virtual portfolio event so we can get even more international connections for our photographers! Stay tuned to hear more about these virtual portfolio events coming soon… Meli connected with Stephen Aviano at Travelzoo who said:
Most of our photographers were originally sourced from Wonderful Machine when I started the shoot-process here several years ago. Please tell Bill Cramer I said hi!!
Meli was also able to recommend three of our photographers to Brook Calhoon at Relocating to the Grand Valley. Lastly, Meli connected with Adam Coffia at AKA who was looking for photographers for a celebrity project in April.
That’s it for February! Check back next month to see how we’re doing.
Need help researching clients? Email our project managers.
Have feedback about the clients we’re promoting to? Email Bill.