Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Federico Serrano. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Federico, appreciate you joining us today. How did you come up with the idea for your business?

I’ve been a little strange my whole live and even more so as a kid. One day in middle school I thought it was funny how my little brother said the word: “juice” and thought it would be funny to incorporate it in every part of my vocabulary. Everything became juicy, my name became juice and the world was my juicebox – keep in mind this was in 2006 at the height of juicy couture. I spent years tagging chalkboards, binders, and lockers with my signature graffiti juicebox and by sophomore year of high school I didn’t even have to write my name on papers, I just needed that little icon. On a whim, I submitted my name to run for sophomore class president and honestly just forgot to campaign. The night before voting I suddenly remembered I needed votes and begged my dad to buy as many Coscto cases of juiceboxes as he could. With our little label maker, we spent all night slapping a “vote for Federico” stickers on dozens of juiceboxes. The next morning I was outside the school throwing these things out to everyone walking in and the rawr of laughter turned into votes and I was class president. By my senior year, I stopped saying juice more than I needed to and thought that would be the end of the “juicy years.” To my surprise, I was asked to run again for student council, but this time for school president. I once again submitted my name to run against a few other fellow students and only a few days later noticed they had all dropped out. I ran up to one of them and asked why, and they said: “they’re all going to remember the juicebox thing, there’s no point.” Years later I look back and I continue to protect that intuitive marketing instinct and is now story behind the name of my digital creative agency, JUICEBOX CREATIVE.

Federico, before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?

I’m Federico Serrano, the proud founder and executive creative director at Juicebox Creative. My background is in brand design and photography and I have spent the last few years as a creative educator while running Juicebox. We started off with youtube videos on video gear, behind the scenes and reviews and now we’ve hosted some in person creative meetups and just hosted our first creative workshop with hopes to launch our first online course on creativity in May. From the inception of Juicebox, we’ve focused our attention on education. I believe the mark we leave on the world is what we can share with our neighbor. Lastly, I was a professional photographer before starting Juicebox and have shot with brands like Nike, Hoka, Brumate as well as many local businesses here in Portland.

We are a small creative agency and a big creative resource based out of Portland, Oregon. Juicebox is a reminder that creativity isn’t a product, but way of life. We partner with world-class freelancers and studios to deliver you the the scalability of a big agency, with the attention and agility of a smaller one. Our clients come to us from all around the world, and we provide them with intuitive digital strategy, intentional brand identity and versatile video and photo production so that their audience can notice, experience and be inspired by them. We have teams ready to go in Portland, Los Angeles, New York, Atlanta, Washington DC, Amsterdam, & Vancouver, Canada.

Any insights you can share with us about how you built up your social media presence?

We started off on youtube with reviews on video gear, behind the scenes of some of our shoots and updates on our agency. To this day, it isn’t the videos with the most views that people come up to me and talk to me about, but the ones with only a few hundred views where I’m sitting on the ground of my home office, dreaming out loud of the future I want for Juicebox. It’s only happened a hand full of times but when strangers recognize me on the street, it wasn’t because I was cool, it was because they related to a moment of honesty on the internet.

The videos that have performed really well have gotten us a lot of followers, but didn’t’ build our audience – viral videos really only serve as an impressive analytic to brag about. Our most loyal followers travel from pretty far to come to our in-person meetups or purchase a ticket for our creative workshops – and that audience was built from being true to who I was and finding a way to translate that into value for our viewers. Through trial and error we learned that is through: fun gear reviews from things we use as a small agency so the audience feels like they’re learning with us, entertaining updates on what’s going on at Juicebox as if the viewer where a member of our board, and a look behind the scenes of some of our productions and how we shot our campaigns so our audience can replicate it themselves. We know what we shoot and why we shoot it just need to remember every time we turn the camera on, it’s a way to relate to our audience not just impress them.

Any thoughts, advice, or strategies you can share for fostering brand loyalty?

One of our clients has been with us since day one of our agency, totaling upwards of $175,000 in revenue for us and I’ve noticed a few key values that our team maintains that have kept us on track. 1. We always maintain an attitude of gratitude. 2. They might not always be right, but we can always do better. 3. We’re clear in expectations and communication. 4. We foster a safe space for creativity, mistakes and laughter.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.juiceboxcreative.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/juiceboxportland
• Linkedin: https://linkedin.com/company/juicebox-creative-agency-portland-oregon/
• Youtube: www.youtube.com/@JUICEBOXCREATIVE
• Other: Tiktok: https://tiktok.com/@juiceboxcreative

Image Credits
Ketan Morris, Ramos Sibarani, Matt Rich