Kevin Owyang
There aren’t many Creative Directors who’ve performed under Leonard Bernstein, ran a financial trading floor with $3 Billion in revenue, heli-snowboarded the Chugach range of Alaska, graduated from MIT, performed with members of the Boston Symphony Orchestra, and was commissioned to create a documentary for a Smithsonian Affiliate.
I love helping brands and people articulate their purpose.
I believe deep within everyone lies a passion to pursue what they were meant for in life. But sometimes what we want and the advice we receive don’t lead us in that direction.
Yet when we hear a story — something that gives us permission to more fully express ourselves, something that makes us realize that the little things we thought broken in us are instead birthplace to every unique strength that makes others treasure us — then we feel connected.
That’s what I love doing. Sifting through the complexity that gives a brand its depth, and expressing the values and beliefs that give it personality.
But it’s about more than art. It’s about helping other succeed, and leading others to fulfill their dreams. I’m an entrepreneurial executive with a record for double-digit growth.
It’s been an unusual path from graduating MIT Sloan School to ending up here. There were times when I ran big books of business, like when I was Executive Vice President of a subsidiary of Kinder Morgan (NYSE:KMI), reporting to the corporate Vice Chairman, with comprehensive authority governing all sales and supply agreements for 14 Bcf per day of natural gas. There I resuscitated an unprofitable division and revenue nearly doubled to $3 Billion annually through 5 merger integrations. If you want to read more about my business achievements, check out my other website, where I am Founder & Creative Director at Avolusis, LLC.
But I think what has brought me the greatest joy has been finding myself tackling challenging situations that I never dreamt existed. Snowboarding and mountaineering in the Chugach of Alaska, Chamonix, or Jackson Hole. Taking a dirtbike along the rocky, steep, narrow trails of the Big Hole Mountains in Idaho. Winning a film award. Or architecting and implementing a recommendation engine for 100 million customer records by developing a 796-core cloud network on a platform using R Statistical Package (similar to SAS/SPSS/Matlab), MPI (Message Passing Interface), LAMP(Linux-Apache-MySQL-php), Amazon EC2, & Amazon S3 — that essentially matched what Netflix had spent years doing.
I think every brand has a complex story. But people only care about what your brand stands for. And I guess I’m good at translating complex paths and journeys into creative film, video, graphics, and messaging content, because my life thrives in that world. And when people hear your brand speak that way, they find resonance they’ve discovered elusive.
So, they want more.
Simply because, it gives them permission to live the purpose in life they were meant to fulfill.