Business: Marketing firm specializing in “creative intelligence”
Headquarters: West Palm Beach
Leadership:
Ann Savage, Founder & CEO
Shane Savage, Chief Strategy Officer
Employees: 20
Website: wearepathos.com
Tagline: Connect Minds. Build Brands
Step into Pathos’ funky offices in downtown West Palm, and you’ll see an open, collaborative space with skateboards riding the walls and perhaps some augmented reality projected. Employees are working on laptops, some in teams, some solo. A couple of them may be taking a mental break at the ping pong table.
Pathos calls itself a creative intelligence firm, specializing in enterprise innovation marketing. The West Palm Beach based company acts as a chief marketing officer for regional and national corporate clients.
“We’re full-service. We’re a CMO supplement to these corporations but we bring the power of an entire marketing department. Whether or not they have in-house solutions, we supplement or become their marketing department,” explained Shane Savage, who joined his mother’s company about four years ago as chief strategy officer.
Pathos works with hospitality groups, automotive, retailers, financial firms, hospitals and the Community Foundation of Palm Beach and Martin County. It often works with parent companies and services their entire portfolios. For instance it works with the parent company of Palm Beach Outlets, which has outlet malls across the country, and with Tenet, with hospitals across South Florida and beyond.
Ann Savage, Pathos’ CEO and co-founder, said Pathos’ services extend through implementation, including developing advertising materials, developing sales tools, building out companies’ digital presence, video production and content creation. For an e-commerce company, for instance, Pathos might manage their platform, and do their product design, branding and packaging.
The company was founded in 1991, but rebranded recently as part of its move downtown to Clematis Street. “We really reimagined the firm. Pathos is a new name for us,” said Ann.
“Pathos is one of the modes of persuasion founded by Aristotle, Pathos being the art of persuasion by appealing to one’s emotion. In everything we do, we are trying to tap into someone’s emotions. Through marketing, we need people to feel in order to make an impact and have something be memorable,” added Shane.
“The big piece is our involvement in the community. We are trying to help establish West Palm Beach as a creative capital by partnering with Joe [Russo of Palm Beach Tech] and all the other companies that are here,” he continued.
Shane said clients tend to stay with them an average of 15 years, but they have also brought in a plethora of clients in new industries.
What are some trends Pathos is seeing?
Creating authentic experiences is key, said Shane. “Consumers, especially millennials and Gen-X, are very intuitive and the key is to make things intuitive, easy to use and experiential but still maintaining the integrity of the brand.” He said experiences work because people want to be entertained and engage and interact with people and a brand. They don’t want the brand just to talk at them.
Another trend, said Ann, is that marketing companies are no longer thinking of content in terms of a beginning and an end, like an ad campaign: “Now it is more about creating content. Whether it is digital assets, animation or photography, it is very fluid and we are assembling it in all sorts of ways. It’s a different way to think about creative materials.”
Adds Shane, “the pace of change is so fast, we are helping companies find more ways to be dynamic and flexible internally as well.”
The team moved to West Palm Beach in November and the transition has gone well.
“It’s an exciting time to be in downtown West Palm. This kind of growth, with incubators for entrepreneurs and more collaborative work environments such as co-working spaces, it’s a priority for the city,” said Shane. “For our team. we can feel it — the energy that is igniting amongst our group as we are venturing out more.”
To stoke the creative culture inside Pathos, the team takes outings and team cultural events, such as a recent trip to Miami’s Wynwood neighborhood where they took at street art class. It does a regular office event called IPA and FYI for creative endeavors such as book clubs, game nights and team building exercises, Shane said.
“The goal for the rebrand and creating that type of culture is we want to be more than just 20 people, we want to open our doors into the community, have that neighborhood feel, and start building things with those around us.”
