'Aha!' moment, peer advisers help businesses succeed
Post Meridian and Bitter Jester Creative should be struggling. Both are small businesses living in a marketing world where dollars traditionally are the first to be cut and last to be restored.
Yet, both are doing well, the result of a peer group connection that began in September 2009 for Post Meridian and an “aha!” moment last summer at BJC.
The message: Difference-making resources may be anywhere, sometimes right under our noses.
At Post Meridian in Schaumburg, the difference makers are members of a Vistage peer group where “I bounce ideas off people and get fantastic insights,” says Adrian Dinu, co-owner and senior producer at Post Meridian.
Vistage is a San Diego-based peer group-advisory board organization with a strong Chicago-area program. Dinu belongs to one of Vistage's Trusted Advisor programs, whose members share experiences and advice.
At Bitter Jester Creative in Highland Park, an inspired zap of energy came when co-owner and creative director Nicolas DeGrazia realized that members of the company's award-winning comedy troupe, The Comic Thread, were ideal candidates to act in BJC's TV commercials and other videos.
Video production and editing is BJC's core, with photography, shepherded by co-owner Daniel Kullman, an obviously related and close second. But live performance, specifically The Comic Thread, is in the mix, too.
“We've worked with 150, maybe 175 different people over the last 13 years,” DeGrazia says. “They're very talented comedic writers, performers and crew” who love the creative freedom but, given the economics, tend to be volunteers.
As BJC concentrates more on “creative engagement” — the company has signed a Los Angeles agent to help “get us attached” to pilots and feature films, DeGrazia says — last summer's realization that its Comedy Thread cast and crew fits into the video services came almost as a surprise to DeGrazia.
Think not seeing the forest because of the trees.
“We have a niche in that we have known talent we can cast in TV commercials and corporate videos,” DeGrazia says. “We have this resource to recommend to our clients, who then don't have to sit through cattle call casting sessions. There's no fitting of square people into round holes. We know who we have.”
Dinu has a somewhat similar situation at Post Meridian. “A good stable of producers and writers” has allowed Post Meridian to begin a transition from postproduction expertise to creative and strategic support for such services as DVD presentations, TV commercials and radio spots.
But Dinu clearly relishes the input he receives from his Vistage group. “They're eight or nine people I meet with every month. I can take any issue to them and they'll help me find the answers,” he says.