Redefining Expectations with newly relaunched agency Tuff
DJay Brawner & Max Rose, Co-Founders of Tuff
In our the latest installment of our interview series on Turbo-Charged small agencies, we sat down with Tuff co-founders DJay Brawner & Max Rose, to chat about Tuff's recent rebrand.
Can you give us a brief overview of your structure and some of the clients with whom you work?
Born out of a production model, we grew into a hybrid agency to better meet the content needs of brands. Staying closely tied to our origin, we are creative and story-led, building cohesive and engaging brand narratives for audiences by hosting a body of creative services including concepting, creative direction, art direction, development, media buying, talent acquisition, and influencer casting. We work with brands like Vans, Rae Wellness, Kappa, and Walt Disney World.
Your elevator pitch please! How do you position your agency to a brand? Why should they work with you – what do you bring to the table?
We are your bold creative partner. We bridge the gap between Gen Z and Gen X while amplifying underrepresented voices and stories. Always adaptable, and always authentic, we relentlessly focus on creating thoughtful, human-driven content that redefines expectation.
Attention spans and media move faster than ever before, so must creative that wants to connect with audiences in real-time. We exist to be an extension of your brand to produce content that illuminates sub-culture trends and delivers at the apex of cultural movements.
Can you talk us through a campaign and how you solved a problem for the client or made a difference to a brand?
Vans came to us to help them with a campaign for ‘Record Store Day.’ They knew they wanted to use their platform to support Black entrepreneurship by highlighting Black-owned record stores and tapped us to help define the story.
What we saw in these record shops were, they are really a part of each of the communities they are in, both the owners and the surrounding community lean into one another – the record stores as an open place of acceptance and belonging for artists and music-lovers and those same people as champions of small business owners.
What came of it was the “Open Doors” campaign. In partnership with Vans CD Bruno Luglio, the campaign consisted of five episodes profiling shop owners in different cities who discuss their passion for supporting local artists and serving their respective communities.
Vans has always embodied the spirit of the skateboard community, one that connects people from all walks of life through common ground found in sport or the arts. I think the difference made in this campaign is the message Vans sends to other global brands – stay close to the communities you impact, we’re all in this together.
Vans Record Store Day, Ep. 5 - Brittany's Record Shop [All episodes can be seen here]
Without giving away your secret sauce of course, what does your roadmap for growth look like? Is it, for example, geographic expansion (if location is still a thing), or joining one of the growing indie agency networks? Developing more project work for other clients?
We’re expanding both geographically and through our scope of work with clients.
We strategically partnered with a production company in Nashville to better serve our clients in the Southeastern regions of the US and we have a satellite office in San Francisco to better serve the Bay Area.
As scope of work has expanded with clients, we’ve grown our talent roster to have more multifaceted creatives who produce in different mediums beyond film. As we grow our internal creatives – creative directors, art directors, copywriters – we want to maintain a boutique growth model that allows us to remain close with our clients, their brands, and the content delivered.