It’s not all about growth. It’s about meeting in the middle.
Digital media is everywhere, in our personal and professional lives alike. TikTok ads, Yelp reviews, and online marketplaces; even the article you’re reading now is an online exclusive. We’re so deep now in the Internet Age, it can be easy to forget sometimes that the digital landscape is still a relatively new one. Navigating it is a necessity for the modern businessperson, but for the longest time, the professionals in that space came from massive industries like television, meaning small businesses either had to learn how to manage all their own media or invest massive amounts of money to find a professional, with no guarantee that they’d get the job done the way you wanted. That’s the media landscape Greg Atkins lived in when he decided to found New Frame Creative.
“It just struck me that there were some gaps in the market that I thought that I knew how to meet,” says Atkins.
But this wasn’t always the path Atkins had seen himself treading.
“I had always been interested in web development, but it was just kind of a hobby,” recalls Atkins. His background was actually in music, and he did technical work for multiple local churches before he began looking into web and media work. He honed his skills at an agency, becoming skilled in several areas of media marketing, but also becoming increasingly disillusioned with what he saw in the industry.
“I was amazed how many people had bad experiences – stories of bad customer service, stories of unprofessional behavior, stories of developers treating them poorly and not delivering on things they said they would do,” says Atkins. “I made the decision that I can do this better.”
New Frame Creative began as a one-man shop. Atkins knew he didn’t have the manpower to do the kind of massive video shoots that big agencies could offer, but rather than take that as a weakness, Atkins decided to turn that into his business model.
“We are intentionally trying to be in that middle space so it’s accessible and affordable,” says Atkins. “We started out working with nonprofit clients, and nonprofit clients can’t afford that kind of stuff. We really like working with locals, and we like working with people who make our community a better place.”
Atkins soon expanded the team, first bringing on a dedicated graphic designer, and then more staff to tackle more of the growing local need for video and other media production. But these days, Atkins says he has no intention of growing the business any further.
“Some other agencies in town, you go into their office and you’re like, ‘Wow, this place is amazing’,” says Atkins. New Frame operates out of a small, almost-residential-like office off Middlebrook Pike, which he says suits their needs just fine. “Well, I hope you enjoyed writing that check for them, because you’re the one paying for that each month.”
Maintaining a lean, versatile team lets New Frame keep costs low, and this means that they aren’t in need of continuously expanding the business to stay profitable, which reduces marketing costs and feeds back into the low operating costs and thus reasonable prices for clients.
“Measuring success at New Frame is not based on how many people work here, how big our office is, or where our building is,” says Atkins. “We’re measuring success by how happy our clients are with the work that we do.”