
What if you want a career in film or TV, but don’t want to move to a big city?
What if you’re a growing small-town business that needs the expertise of a major agency?
What if you’re an organization in a major centre and want your marketing budget to go further, by engaging a team not burdened by big city overheads?
What if you’re a couple of talented guys who could make all that happen?
Enter Ash Murrell and Brady Rogers, the restless minds behind AMP Visual Media, a full-service creative agency, and MindFusion Visuals, a cutting-edge video production house with its own fully-equipped studio. Over the last couple of years, Brady and Ash have created a sea of change in the local media landscape.
Paul Papadopoulos, Professor of TV & New Media Design at Loyalist College, describes how he sees the change: “When my students were graduating in 2011, they had no choice; they had to go to Toronto, Vancouver, Montreal, New York, LA. Now, while we have great students in those cities, we have a plethora of excellent graduates who are staying right here in town and making shit happen.”
Brady echoes this. “There was a shocking number of people who worked in the industry, who were from here, but not necessarily working here.” Now those same people aren’t just offered great work locally, they’re also paid appropriately. “From the beginning we decided nobody’s getting low-balled,” says Brady. “Any rates our crew could get in Toronto, they’ve got to get here.”
Wages aside, small-town overheads are not the same as Toronto, which the duo say give them a huge advantage over their urban competitors. But they don’t want to just be a more cost-effective resource for big-city clients. A core objective of AMP and MindFusion is to give local companies the same top-tier experience that the world’s biggest brands get with major agencies: top-tier resources, expertise, and opportunities. “They can come to us and get the same kind of respect for their brand,” says Ash.
The relationship between MindFusion and AMP has evolved over the years, but really snapped into focus in early 2023. Clients who are already working with an agency can engage with MindFusion; those without an agency can begin their journey with AMP, which offers clients everything from initial brand identity work, creative direction and marketing strategy, right through to content creation and implementation, even including the nuts and bolts of managing social media streams.
At every stage, helping the client understand and communicate their differentiator – why they do what they do – has in turn become a differentiator for AMP and MindFusion.
“That’s one of the big things Ash brought to the production company,” says Brady. “Not just making the ad, but why we make the ad the way we do, why we make the video the way we do.”
“It’s all about the story the client is trying to tell,” adds Ash. “Brady is all about doing the story justice. He has an unwavering determination to tell the story in the best way possible.”
If all this sounds expensive, the reality is that it can be, and Ash and Brady admit they’re not for everyone. But, recognizing that a high price tag might be an obstacle for some of the businesses they want to serve, they have developed an aggressively-priced new offering: up to two hours in studio plus professional editing time to produce a one-hour podcast and 30 short-form video clips. “For $1,000 the client gets a month’s worth of social media content,” they say, making great video content “easily accessible to virtually anyone.”
The team uses this approach themselves, regularly posting content that gives insight into their work, showcases local individuals and organizations, and provides the audience with valuable insights they can apply in their own businesses.
Follow @ampvisualmedia and @mindfusionvisuals on Facebook and Instagram, @ampvisualmedia and @BradyRogersDP on YouTube, and ampvisualmedia.com and mindfusionvisuals.com on the web. Podcasts are available on YouTube and Spotify.
For more articles read the full magazine on Issuu