Paving High Street: How We Got Here

At High Street, we work with Rochester-area small businesses and non-profits every day by telling their stories through quality video and written content. We love Rochester, and we consider it a tremendous opportunity—and an important responsibility—to support its small businesses by telling their stories, and telling them well.

So, you may ask, what's High Street's story? How did we get here?

It started with a shared passion.

A team of true entrepreneurial spirits, we were all small business owners before we met back in 2014, while Doug and Steve worked together on their master’s degrees in strategic marketing. We already had our own ventures going—our own plans, dreams, and goals—but what formed the bond between us was what we all shared at our core: a genuine passion for helping small businesses grow and thrive. (Well, that and our amazing personalities.)

We wanted to help small businesses succeed, but to do that, we couldn't ignore the challenges keeping them from success. When it came to marketing, we saw small businesses shelling out entire salaries’ worth of budget (that they didn't have) for work from big agencies, and we saw others sacrificing quality and results for work that was substandard and ineffective—just because it was cheap. As small business owners ourselves, we were amazed (and sad) to find so little in between.

So, it wasn’t long before we all came together with the same question: “What can we do about this?”

We recognized a (big) need.

In our experience working with small businesses and non-profits over the years, we've recognized a serious gap in the quality of video and written content promoting small organizations (especially those with limited budgets). There’s an abundance of low-quality, fast-results content—a cheesy video or a salesy blog, for example—that focuses only on the call-to-action. It might yield some results, but it doesn't often add real, lasting value to your business or your clients. And then there’s a steady stream of aesthetic-only content—beautiful for the sake of being beautiful—that doesn't put much focus on getting you the results you need. As marketing professionals and creatives, we made it our mission to provide the best of both in all the work we do.

We know the struggles of small business.

High Street is a team of creative experts who know firsthand the plight of the small business owner. Because we've all been there before, we understand the struggle to grow your business while also balancing your limited time, budget, and resources.

We help good companies grow and achieve success by taking over what you can't. And we love doing it. So you don't have a "big agency" budget for video production? Don't have the time to sit down and write a quality, SEO-rich blog? It's no surprise—you only have everything else on your to-do list. But that doesn't mean you can ignore these important marketing tools, which are vital to your company's health. And it shouldn't mean you have to sacrifice quality for fast-and-cheap options, either. You need marketing help from experts who understand your struggles, who know what it takes to move you forward, and who truly believe in what you do.

We love what we do, because we love what you do.

We call it "Strategic Art."

At High Street, we firmly believe that the best way to drive real results that last is to create all content (every video, every blog) not only with effective marketing strategy, but with authenticity, artistic vision, and top-notch production value. We like to call it "Strategic Art,” and it’s the lens through which we aim to tell every story that comes our way.