Baton Rouge-based entrepreneur Marie Powell has lived in Louisiana on and off for 20 years. She was born in state, but even after moving away twice, family, culture and her southern roots brought her back each time.
Powell launched BREW Agency in January 2010 to build strong brands for startups to established businesses. The agency focuses on branding, interactive, design and marketing and works to create customer experiences that change perception, evoke emotion and grow their clients’ businesses.
Check out her website, follow her on Twitter, and find out how she answered our questions below.
What is the most exciting thing you are working on right now?
Getting to create new, beautiful brand experiences, all while expanding our branding agency through unique service lines. Brew works with growing companies in many ways, but recently we’ve been collaborating on Brand Strategy and Digital Marketing Kickstarters – a series of multi-node programs that helps companies focus on their core business, while we handle the branding, strategy, design, digital advertising, and media placement. We’ve also built a lot of websites, and we are most proud of our recent works, mainly because of the deep, rich experience set we are able to tap into from our previous catalog of work. We talk about this in our Taproom.
What are you most excited about happening on the Silicon Bayou that you aren’t directly involved in?
There are so many creative ideas that have great concept, but sometimes lack the branding and marketing expertise needed to make a product or service launch with success. Startups don’t always have the budget to achieve the high-level branding their idea deserves. I’d like to see more involvement in helping these brands get off the ground.
Tell us about your biggest failure.
In December of 2009, I was laid off from an art director position at another advertising agency. It was early Tuesday morning when I got the news. Clearly upset, I packed up my things, and left the office not knowing what I was going to do next. Many might consider that circumstance a failure. I guess you could say I did too, but only for a few minutes. I made up my mind on my drive home that day that I was going to work for myself. I made a few phone calls and had my first freelance project lined up that same afternoon. That was the inception of Brew. I haven’t gone a day without work since. This “failure” was probably the best thing that ever happened to me.
In Your Opinion, which institution is most due for disruption?
Politics.
What’s your favorite thing to do on a Sunday afternoon?
Go to church then spend the day with my family. We grill and cook outside almost every Sunday.
If you had to eat one thing for the rest of your life, what would it be?
Cheesecake
If you could live in any other time period, which would you choose?
Hmmm… I don’t think I want to go backwards. I like it now. If I had to choose, maybe the 1920’s… for great fashion and entrepreneurialism.
If you could win any award in the world, which would you be most proud to possess?
Mom of the year 🙂 Nothing is more important than this!
The standard superpower dichotomy:
Teleportation. It would make visiting family so much easier.
If you were stuck on an elevator for two hours, what one person (dead or alive) would you choose to be stuck with?
My husband.
If you had to pick a drink to describe yourself (alcoholic or non-alcoholic) what would it be?
Coffee. Can’t sit still.
If you wrote a regular column for Silicon Bayou News what would it be about and what would you name it?
Brewing Great Brands. It would be about helping startups and entrepreneurs navigate through their ideas and how to bring those ideas to market. I would provide advice on how to design, communicate an excellent brand, product, or service. How to reach and speak to targeted audiences, etc. A client told us that we had “Iterative Intuition” – they told us that because of our close working relationship with them, that Brew had developed a knack for knowing what they wanted at every step along the creative process, and it made working with us fun, enjoyable and inspiring.