Tag : PATHOS

By Nancy Dahlberg

Member Spotlight | PATHOS

Business: Marketing firm specializing in “creative intelligence”

Headquarters: West Palm Beach

Leadership: Ann Savage, Founder & CEO; Shane Savage, Chief Strategy Officer

Employees: 20 full-time

Clients: hospitality groups, automotive, retailers, financial firms, hospitals and community organizations.

Website: wearepathos.com

Hannah Haywood walks, Fabiana Otero bikes, and Luke Liscom soon plans to One-Wheel to work. And that’s just how their employer, Pathos, likes it.

Pathos is a creative intelligence firm, specializing in full-service enterprise marketing, and is located in downtown West Palm Beach. A big part of its culture since the 29-year-old company rebranded and moved to 319 Clematis Street about a year ago has been to get more involved in the community. For team members Haywood, Otero and Liscom as well as others, that’s easy to do when you work where you want to live – and vice versa.

“We have hosted more than 40 events that have gotten community members from all walks of life into our offices. We also go to other events around the community – it is part of our culture,” said the 24-year-old Otero, who is Brand Coordinator for Pathos. She has been working at Pathos for one year, and before that graduated from UF and did marketing work for the university. “And with our open office, we learn from each other every day. That is ingrained in our culture, too.”

Liscom, 23, is a Motion Designer at Pathos. He interned twice for Pathos while studying at Ringling College of Art & Design. Now he’s fulltime at Pathos working with cutting edge technologies such as 3D mapping and augmented reality, and he’s planning to move downtown soon. One-Wheel, he says, is his primary mode of transportation and you are likely to see him on One-Wheel group rides around town, too.

“We look at the community as part of our effort to create creative capital. To be in a space where we bring people in and work with each other and help grow the creative community has been wonderful,” he said.

Haywood, 23, is Media Coordinator at Pathos, working with clients on their media assets as well as diving into media research for them. But on Saturdays, you’ll always find her at downtown’s Green Market when it’s running. For her, like the others, the live-work-play lifestyle is natural. “We love the city feel, with all the the local vendors and small businesses.”

“Pathos is so unique and special to us because we aren’t scared to search for what makes us happy in our work life and Pathos provides a great balance of play and work and just being happy to go to work every day,” she said.

Achieving that balance and community engagement were the goal a year ago when Pathos moved downtown, said Shane Savage, Pathos’ Chief Strategy Officer, “We want to open our doors into the community, have that neighborhood feel, and start building things with those around us,” he said then.

Mission accomplished. In addition to the 40 events the company has hosted this past year – including for Creative Mornings, Leadership Palm Beach County, Junior Achievement  and various high school groups that get to experience augmented reality, 3D modeling and video production – Pathos’ team gets out in the community too, such as holding open office hours at 1909, helping Wellington High School prepare for its dance marathon, holding branding workshops with Palm Beach Gardens High School, and regularly attending meetups like Blood, Sweat & Beers.

Savage said the move downtown and a focus on getting out into the community has paid off in several ways. Pathos has found it easier to attract like-minded creatives to join the team full-time.  The company is also attracting community-focused clients. Pathos is currently helping Good Samaritan Medical Center with its 100 year anniversary and it started working with the Community Foundation of Palm Beach and Martin Counties, in addition to adding two large statewide organizations to its client roster, Savage said. “We’ve grown our profits as well, just through these initiatives.”

Savage said the stories of Haywood, Otero and Liscom, all native Floridians, show that students and young professionals don’t have to leave the state to find the innovative companies and challenging career paths.

Looking ahead, Savage added: “We want to continue to help build West Palm Beach into a creative capital.”

By Nancy Dahlberg

Member Spotlight | PATHOS

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.”