Early in my career as a professional photographer and brand consultant, I often collaborated with agencies, typically as a subcontractor, helping bring their creative visions to life. But over time, I noticed a troubling pattern: most agencies weren’t built with the client’s interests in mind.

I’ll never forget one meeting in particular: I had been hired to shoot product photography. Ten people from the agency showed up, none of whom seemed to know what the others did, and the lead creative spent the whole time talking about himself. Not once did he ask the client if they were happy with the work. It was all ego, no value.

I walked out of that meeting with one thought: There’s a better way to do this.

So I built it.

The Early Days of FPW Media

FPW Media started in 2012 in the living room of my apartment. Just a couple of desks and a lot of camera gear. As the company grew, I took a leap and leased our first 3,500-square-foot warehouse. It was mostly empty– just gear, a skeleton crew, and a commitment to reinvest every dollar into building something better. Not long after, I hired our first full-time employee, and things began to take shape.

From the beginning, FPW was designed to break the mold of the traditional marketing agency. It was designed to be the Unagency, a group of highly specialized creative studios operating under one roof. While each studio stands on its own, they come together seamlessly to solve holistic marketing challenges. No silos. No red tape. Just integrated, high-velocity creative execution. 

We baked our first value, “Fast”, right into our name– Fast Paced World. A lot of agencies are capable of producing great work, but few can do it with the responsiveness that today’s world demands. At FPW, speed is part of our infrastructure. We move fast, we adapt quickly, and we deliver on tight timelines without sacrificing quality.

Our second founding value is service. Our goal is to be the “easy button” that lives on our clients’ desks. Every client has a single point of contact they can go to for anything from market research to merch fulfillment, website rebuilds, and even film-quality video shoots. Our teams delve deep into learning each client’s business as if they were a direct employee. And even when a client makes a request that other agencies would run away from, FPW never says no out of fear. Instead, we say, let’s find a way to make it happen.

What truly sets us apart after all these years is how our business model is built on the foundation of long-term client success. We care less about short-term profits and more about outcomes. Our clients know we’ll stand by them. If something goes wrong, we fix it no matter how big or small. That’s not an empty promise, it’s operationally built into how we work every single day.

FPW Media Today

It’s safe to say FPW Media has outgrown our humble beginnings in my apartment living room. Today, we operate out of a 24,000-square-foot facility and employ nearly 50 full-time team members. Over 95% of what we do is executed entirely in-house, allowing us to control quality, timelines, and outcomes from start to finish.

And our people? They’re not typical agency hires. We recruit from all walks of life: film, trades, startups, art, even heavy industry. We hire based on raw skill, creative hunger, and the personality traits that drive excellence. Our team is full of dedicated builders, makers, and visionaries. We don’t care where or how you learned your craft, only what you will do with it next.

Walking through our offices in Springfield today, you’ll see and feel the difference. We don’t invest in flashy, sleek real estate or fancy downtown addresses; FPW is invested in functionality, creativity, and human capital. Our spaces are designed for making things, not just talking about them. On our walls, there’s a saying we live by:

 

 “Every day, we make the impossible possible.”

At FPW Media, that’s not a tagline, it’s the standard.