Interview with Cliff Pia,
President and Creative Director of Millennium Creative Group
What is your professional background?
In my early years as a musician, I played jazz gigs with Sly Stone, Robbie Krieger of The Doors, Jimmy Buffett, Gerry Mulligan and many others. I soon found myself in recording studios and became fascinated with production. While most of my musician friends would sleep until 2 p.m., I would always wake up early and spend time learning engineering techniques. My first sound production company was opened in 1982 producing film scores with 40 or more piece orchestras. We grew quickly and started producing film, video and multimedia productions.
In 1990, I was asked to run The American Comedy Network where, as president and creative director, I honed my writing, management and business skills. We created the first interactive comedy website and had the first ISDN lines in Connecticut so we could work with our voice talent anywhere in the country real-time.
What is the company's background/history?
In 1996, my wife Cheryl and I founded Millennium with the vision of being the first virtual production company. Within five years, we opened a second office in Carlsbad to serve our West Coast clientele and to raise our kids in a healthy environment. Now it has been 10 years, and we've had the great privilege, and good times, of working with some of the most successful brands in the world like Pepsi, Tropicana, Sony, Duracell, Toshiba, Nivea, Gillette, Miller Brewing Company, Virgin MegaStore, Disney and P&G.
What services does Millennium provide?
Millennium Creative Group is a full-service, creative production source offering agencies and brands a unique resource for marketing and communications. We work with corporations and brand managers as well as advertising and promotional agencies, developing strategic creative content.
Our mission is to create memorable work that engages clients with their audiences using powerful creative and cutting-edge technology.
What is unique about your company?
Any standard video production company can produce commercials and corporate videos. We're different because we offer more, we thoroughly understand branding and marketing strategies from our client's perspectives. We immerse ourselves in their corporate culture and understand how our creative content must touch an emotional nerve to be memorable and effective. We're left brain/right brain balanced.
We produce unique and cost-effective commercials, compelling web content, live event content, business to business and business to consumer communications that must motivate, educate and inspire in order to succeed. By using the latest technologies, we're able to have our main office be like the deck of a starship, allowing us to physically be in California and watch our edits happening live in New York, or view our motion graphics in progress in any part of the globe.
What is the most challenging aspect of your job?
Defining what is entertainment for entertainment's sake and what is actually a smart branding campaign. When companies launch any type of creative campaign, they risk the chance of the agency creating a spot that boosts internal egos instead of selling the product. We constantly strive to remind our clients of those main objectives and design our creative to reflect those.
What do you enjoy most about your position?
Not only do I get to work with some of the most inspiring, competent and creative individuals in the country, directors, graphic artists, animators, actors, musicians– but I get to work alongside my amazing wife, Cheryl, who serves as vice president of the company, and grow this as a family business. I've even started working with my kids on certain projects and find that absolutely gratifying.
What is your greatest accomplishment in business?
For many years, the bulk of our business has been through advertising agencies and to a large extent, it still is. But we are more and more being asked to work directly with large corporations like Sony and all the PepsiCo brands, which says a lot about the level of trust these brands have in us.
Where do you see the company in five or 10 years?
In five years, we will have tripled in size and added offices in L.A. and Argentina where we work frequently now. We'll be transferring raw HD footage between our various studio locations in real-time and producing large amounts of our own branded content for various broadband, broadcast and mobile network outlets.
Beyond that, we plan to sell the company so we can devote ourselves to philanthropy full-time.
Any community service activities/organizations you are involved with?
Cheryl and I are very involved with Project Concern International, a nonprofit whose mission is to prevent disease, improve community health and promote sustainable environments. Cheryl serves on the board of directors and I'm on various committees. Cheryl will be traveling with Project Concern to Central America next month as a volunteer and plans to take a camera with her so watch for some video.
We also produced the Putumayo One World CD with my 8-year-old son to raise funds for Make-A-Wish and are about to start another project with him for PBS, a weekly radio program, to be aired starting in September.
President and Creative Director of Millennium Creative Group
What is your professional background?
In my early years as a musician, I played jazz gigs with Sly Stone, Robbie Krieger of The Doors, Jimmy Buffett, Gerry Mulligan and many others. I soon found myself in recording studios and became fascinated with production. While most of my musician friends would sleep until 2 p.m., I would always wake up early and spend time learning engineering techniques. My first sound production company was opened in 1982 producing film scores with 40 or more piece orchestras. We grew quickly and started producing film, video and multimedia productions.
In 1990, I was asked to run The American Comedy Network where, as president and creative director, I honed my writing, management and business skills. We created the first interactive comedy website and had the first ISDN lines in Connecticut so we could work with our voice talent anywhere in the country real-time.
What is the company's background/history?
In 1996, my wife Cheryl and I founded Millennium with the vision of being the first virtual production company. Within five years, we opened a second office in Carlsbad to serve our West Coast clientele and to raise our kids in a healthy environment. Now it has been 10 years, and we've had the great privilege, and good times, of working with some of the most successful brands in the world like Pepsi, Tropicana, Sony, Duracell, Toshiba, Nivea, Gillette, Miller Brewing Company, Virgin MegaStore, Disney and P&G.
What services does Millennium provide?
Millennium Creative Group is a full-service, creative production source offering agencies and brands a unique resource for marketing and communications. We work with corporations and brand managers as well as advertising and promotional agencies, developing strategic creative content.
Our mission is to create memorable work that engages clients with their audiences using powerful creative and cutting-edge technology.
What is unique about your company?
Any standard video production company can produce commercials and corporate videos. We're different because we offer more, we thoroughly understand branding and marketing strategies from our client's perspectives. We immerse ourselves in their corporate culture and understand how our creative content must touch an emotional nerve to be memorable and effective. We're left brain/right brain balanced.
We produce unique and cost-effective commercials, compelling web content, live event content, business to business and business to consumer communications that must motivate, educate and inspire in order to succeed. By using the latest technologies, we're able to have our main office be like the deck of a starship, allowing us to physically be in California and watch our edits happening live in New York, or view our motion graphics in progress in any part of the globe.
What is the most challenging aspect of your job?
Defining what is entertainment for entertainment's sake and what is actually a smart branding campaign. When companies launch any type of creative campaign, they risk the chance of the agency creating a spot that boosts internal egos instead of selling the product. We constantly strive to remind our clients of those main objectives and design our creative to reflect those.
What do you enjoy most about your position?
Not only do I get to work with some of the most inspiring, competent and creative individuals in the country, directors, graphic artists, animators, actors, musicians– but I get to work alongside my amazing wife, Cheryl, who serves as vice president of the company, and grow this as a family business. I've even started working with my kids on certain projects and find that absolutely gratifying.
What is your greatest accomplishment in business?
For many years, the bulk of our business has been through advertising agencies and to a large extent, it still is. But we are more and more being asked to work directly with large corporations like Sony and all the PepsiCo brands, which says a lot about the level of trust these brands have in us.
Where do you see the company in five or 10 years?
In five years, we will have tripled in size and added offices in L.A. and Argentina where we work frequently now. We'll be transferring raw HD footage between our various studio locations in real-time and producing large amounts of our own branded content for various broadband, broadcast and mobile network outlets.
Beyond that, we plan to sell the company so we can devote ourselves to philanthropy full-time.
Any community service activities/organizations you are involved with?
Cheryl and I are very involved with Project Concern International, a nonprofit whose mission is to prevent disease, improve community health and promote sustainable environments. Cheryl serves on the board of directors and I'm on various committees. Cheryl will be traveling with Project Concern to Central America next month as a volunteer and plans to take a camera with her so watch for some video.
We also produced the Putumayo One World CD with my 8-year-old son to raise funds for Make-A-Wish and are about to start another project with him for PBS, a weekly radio program, to be aired starting in September.