We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Andre Pascual a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Andre, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Going back to the beginning – how did you come up with the idea in the first place?

Having worked in agency and in-house, and in start-ups and publicly traded companies, I saw how many creative service agencies were growing too broad in their offerings. With generative AI also supplementing these services, a lot of what’s being published and created has lost its soul.

As a digital marketer of 12+ years, I was frustrated when I spent days to weeks onboarding a creative agency, but once the contract was signed, we received sub-par work that didn’t speak to our brand.

Additionally, I saw a need to fulfill a niche—visual creative with personality and a human touch. AI isn’t going anywhere, and I think it works best as a tool to assist but not to inform or be the focus of the creative. Further niching down, I saw demand for mixed-medium of art styles, textures, and imperfections in creative work for companies to best tell their brand’s story. The best brands feel alive and have a distinct personality. AI or careless creatives can’t create that for you.

With all this in mind, I started positioning High Noon Media as a visual creative collective, meaning a group of independent creatives with specific styles that can collaborate together to fulfill this demand. I’m working to bring on hand-drawn illustrators, digital designers, photographers, videographers, and muralists. I’ve had some interest and buy-in into the vision.

Andre, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

My story in creating High Noon Media was both from a place of feast and famine. I had grown comfortable in my 12 years as a digital marketer but was laid off just two days before my wedding in October 2023. Rather than settling for a paycheck in a role in my comfort zone again, I took the opportunity to pursue becoming a creative full-time.

I had been a part-time photographer on and off through the years and a hobbyist photographer, but the corporate life burnout had me want a pivot in my career towards something new. This eventually manifested into High Noon Media, a way to pay the bills but also explore a passion. I offered marketing services initially, and still do, but have since focused on growing an offering of creative services.

Having worked with creatives my entire life, I had a network of friends who were always trying to find new leads and projects. I was now in the same boat. For many creatives, it’s hard to have a stable, recurring income. The issue I realized isn’t that we lack talent or that our work isn’t valuable enough to book more clients, it’s that everyone I knew was living on an island. It’s hard to be a full-time creative by yourself. I don’t think any of us chose to do it because it’s easy. We certainly didn’t sign up to be accountants, legal, marketing, sales, and customer service all-in-one to pursue being full-time creatives. Being an island was hard and as I spent the past year working under High Noon full-time, I decided to solve for this.

Clients always have more than one need. Long-term partnerships between vendors and clients are born when vendors continually solve for them. Creative service vendors always need more work but the work requested isn’t always within their discipline. High Noon Media solves this by being a collective of vetted creatives, who while maintaining their small businesses, can rely on High Noon Media to solve requests outside their discipline or help provide leads.

When you work with High Noon Media as a client, we pair you with one of our experienced and skilled creatives for the requested work. Have more than one need? Photography and brand identity? Social media graphics and a hand-drawn food menu? We got you. We generate leads that are good fits for all involved and lend support across services plus project management and account management to our creatives. Flexibility, scalability, transparency, and agreeable terms are the goals.

Are there any books, videos, essays or other resources that have significantly impacted your management and entrepreneurial thinking and philosophy?

I tend to read books that help with my productivity and mental health. It’s very introspective for me. Right now, I’m reading The Daily Stoic by Ryan Holiday. I don’t subscribe to stoicism completely, but the daily meditations have been helpful for me to reflect, organize, and journal out my ideas and thoughts.

I watch a lot of YouTube that teaches me or inspires me. Film essays, photography history or tutorials, and I sometimes live vicariously through game play throughs. Girl on Film is a favorite film essayist of the moment.

I’d say that in the last few years, I’ve listened to differing views on productivity, creativity in photography, technical skills, and marketing. It’s important to consume both ends of perspectives and decide which parts resonate with you. I think that’s where personal style develops.

You are what you consume is true but what you put into practice is equally as important. I try to also consciously practice anything I learn and grow 1% better every day.

What do you think helped you build your reputation within your market?

I haven’t cornered a market exactly, but I do have a client base that I rotate through. For me, I try to manage expectations, be detailed in communication, be competitive in pricing, and deliver the promised results and then some. Rinse and repeat. I would say I need to build a visible brand reputation online. More of that to come.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.highnoonmedia.com/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/high.noon.media
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=61555866212445
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/high-noon-media

Image Credits

6th Ave Storytelling