Poptent, a US-based crowdsourced video production and media company, has launched Poptent Productions, a premium video production business unit for big brands and agencies.
Founded in 2007, Poptent lets creatives sign up for free and offer their services. Today it provides a platform to 50,000 videographers (including a number of agencies) to create videos for brands.
The company was founded by Chairman Rick Parkhill who also started iMedia Communications; President Neil Perry, former VP Marketing, Monster.com and McDonald’s Corporation; and Executive Vice President Tony Romeo, former Professor at Columbia University, and head of the Unilever Interactive Media Brand Center. The company’s CEO is Andy Jedynak, an Internet and media industry veteran previously with NBC, KidZui, and WeatherBug.
Poptent Productions will vet and select the most talented producers from Poptent’s community, which spans 140 countries, to produce commercials and other videos for major brands and agencies. So essentially it’s like an elite club that silos off the best creatives to work on big-budget projects. It’s ultimately designed to offer a faster, nimbler alternative to traditional video production methods.
Today’s launch follows a six-month testing phase during which Poptent Productions has worked with a handful of major brands, including Dell, Intel, Jaguar and General Mills. Indeed, the Dell partnership culminated in the completion and national broadcast of a high-profile TV ad aired during college football’s BCS Championship Game:
Company veteran David Mann will head Poptent Productions, as VP and general manager of the business unit. Poptent has also hired producer Jon Seidman as executive in charge of productions for Poptent Productions, and he has already developed programmes for MTV, A&E, Sundance, Discovery, Travel and others.
In addition to the commercial advertisements that have thus far comprised the bulk of Poptent’s business, Poptent Productions will also be engaged by businesses to develop corporate videos, how-to videos, video storyboards, and more.
“This is the ideal time to launch Poptent Productions, specifically as global demand for high-quality video from major brands and agencies is at all-time high and accelerating,” said Jedynak. “We believe that Poptent Production’s unique model is highly beneficial both to our clients, by being cost-effective and fast, as well as to our community of producers, by providing opportunities and incentives to be directly selected to work for some of the world’s most visible and respected brands.”
Poptent’s principal offices are in Southern California and suburban Philadelphia, with regional sales offices in New York, Chicago, among other cities. The company also opened an office in Sao Paulo, Brazil in mid-2011.
Get the TNW newsletter
Get the most important tech news in your inbox each week.