The partnership will add video capabilities to Craft&Crew’s website production services.
Today is our 12th anniversary and we are giving ourselves the gift of an amazing new partner through the acquisition of Simple Story, a well-known video production company based here in Ottawa! Simple Story’s management team and employees will continue to support their current clients and new business opportunities as an independent company under Craft&Crew’s management.
Ten or so years ago, our fledgling agency hired an equally fledgling partner in Simple Story to produce a video for one of our clients. There was no creative process to speak of, just a lot of passion and entrepreneurial energy in then founder and CEO, Kyle Braatz’ Centerpointe townhouse for an all nighter or two to get it done. Since then, we have enjoyed an ever-growing relationship with Simple Story, its leadership team, and new ownership group. We are incredibly excited to guide the company’s growth moving forward.
Simple Story will see an executive transition from its current CEO, Alex Dorward, to a new leadership team that includes Craft&Crew’s CEO, Dave Hale, and Director of Operations, Michelle Gagne, as well as Simple Story’s Gabriel Proulx (Head of Production), Vicki Figura (Lead Producer), and Stefania Marino (Sales & Marketing Manager). Alex Dorward, an Ottawa Business Journal Forty Under 40 recipient, had been leading both Simple Story and Ottawa-based strategic content agency, Ascribe, for the last six months and will now focus 100% of his energy in the latter.
More and more, Craft&Crew’s clients have been asking for high quality brand and product marketing videos to be included in their website redesign scopes of work. They will now benefit from Simple Story’s capabilities and experience with content strategy, development, and distribution, especially when it comes to live action and animated video production. In return, Simple Story’s clients recognize that a great video asset will only perform as well as the platform it lives on or drives traffic to, so this close alignment with Craft&Crew will allow for a seamless user experience from click-to-customer.
Founded in 2011, Simple Story has produced thousands of animated and live-action videos, telling stories for brands like Coca-Cola, Walmart, Bell Media, CIBC, Shopify, Pfizer, L’Oreal, Pitney Bowes, Citrix, and the Government of Canada.
Simple Story has established itself as a top video marketing agency in North America, winning several awards for creative storytelling and topping agency recommendation lists for video content.As a Simple Story equity partner since 2015, I couldn’t be more excited and energised by our alignment with Craft&Crew, a partnership that will enable us to grow our client list while keeping our artists and storytellers focused on creating the world-class video content that has brought Simple Story such renown.
About Craft&Crew
Since 2010, Craft&Crew has produced more than 500 large-scale websites for both business-to-business (B2B) and consumer services organisations in complex industries like SaaS technology, financial services, education, insurance, real estate, and telecommunications. The company’s clients include; Google, SurveyMonkey, TD Canada Trust, Xplornet Communications, and REALTOR.ca.
