Worcester Business Journal

10 Worcester Business Journal | September 19, 2022 | wbjournal.com For 15 years, Votary Films has built up a business by helping companies with their storytelling BY SLOANE M. PERRON WBJ Staff Writer J ed Burdick founded Votary Films of Worcester in 2007. From brand development to filming and post-production, Votary has created videos for a wide variety of local and national businesses and nonprofits, such as Boys & Girls Club of Worcester, international finance firm Fidelity Investments, manufacturer Saint-Gobain in Worcester, Worcester Polytechnic Institute, and national sports apparel maker Reebok. How did Votary Films get its start? I had just come off of writing and directing a feature film in northern Indiana, and I was kind of starry eyed about being able to jump from one independent film to the next. At the time, I had four children, I have six now, and they were very young. I was going through a career change. So, when I finished the feature film, I'm like, "What do we do now? Do I actually go get a job somewhere? Let's just start a film production company and see what comes of it." We moved here to Massachusetts, barely knew anyone, and at first, I just was taking anything I could get. We quickly became a full-service creative agency, where we were tak- ing on websites, logos, and all kinds of stuff. Fast forward five years of heart- ache, challenges, grinding, and trying to build a business, and we were finally like, "We're not doing well with everything other than film and video." So, we decided to focus on film and video exclusively. We really started growing in 2014, and we've been on a fairly steady climb since then. In the last two years, we've really started dialing in on who we are and the types of com- panies we can serve best. And funny enough, it's more with the organiza- tions that actually care about humans flourishing. So, we call it meaningful storytelling, and that's actually our tagline: "Meaningful Stories." How do your services capture the meaningful stories of businesses? e first thing we do is we bring people into a workshop we designed called e Story Acceleration Workshop. at really allows us to get to know the customer really well with aspects such as: What are they trying to achieve? What is their long-term vision and goals? en we help translate that to: What are the storytelling opportunities that would really accelerate toward those goals? Do we need more high-end customer case studies? Do we need to write some fictional narrative that would really put them on the map? Do we need to make a documentary series about what they're achieving? Do they need more commercials like straight-scripted commercials? All kinds of ideas bubble to the surface in the Story Acceleration Workshop. en we go into figuring out, and how it fits their budget. Story is pretty much the most powerful force in the universe. It's no coincidence our brains think in story and we dream in story. ere's a lot of ways you can leverage this thing called story innately in us. So, we try to get people to be really vulnerable and teach them to lean into leveraging the power of their authentic stories. Telling business stories Jed Burdick Executive producer Votary Films, in Worcester Founded: 2007 Employees: 7 Burdick's birthplace: Dallas Residence: Auburn PHOTO | COURTESY OF VOTARY FILMS

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