Hothouse’s New Head of Creative Looks to Promote the Atlanta Creator Economy

Atlanta keeps maturing in the creative agency world and Brandon Rochon is one of the city’s new transplants helping it grow.

Rochon has joined independent agency Hothouse as its evp, head of creative, moving across the country from Los Angeles, where he was CEO and chief creative officer at Kastner & Partners, heading up creative for the shop’s longtime partner Red Bull.

In his career, Rochon has worked with some of the biggest brands, including leading the Samsung account for Leo Burnett, Coca-Cola for Ogilvy Paris and working with Absolut Vodka, McDonalds, PlayStation, Heineken and Nissan at TBWA\Paris.

In Atlanta, Rochon sees a city on the rise, and in Hothouse, he saw an agency he could help to improve.

“After moving to Atlanta, I thought, where could be a place where I could add value, and Hothouse was the one,” Rochon told Adweek, adding that he was impressed by Hothouse’s clients, which include Mercedes, InterContinental Hotels Group, Interface, Deloitte, Cox Automotive and Cort Furniture.

Hothouse, said Rochon, is a sleeping giant. It has developed a quiet reputation for more than 25 years for solid business without an ego, and he sees an opportunity to build on that success while making a bigger name for itself in Atlanta and the greater industry.

“As soon as we have an opinion and a philosophy, and a system of how we see how culture moves and why culture moves that way in Atlanta, it’s poised to be the next great shop to talk about,” added Rochon.

Jon Katinsky, founder and president of Hothouse, said that the agency helps build brands and brings big ideas to connect its clients to culture in authentic ways.

“Our ethos is Brandon Rochon’s foundation,” said Katinsky in a statement. “We exist to help our clients mind the gaps between their vision and their current reality, leading to engagement and loyalty that lives beyond the campaign.”

Promoting creators and the creator economy

Rochon chose Atlanta due to its burgeoning creator culture, and he hopes to promote those creators through Hothouse.

Atlanta already has some top ad agencies, including Majority, Dagger, Six Degrees, 22squared and offices of major shops like BBDO, Digitas, Publicis, Wunderman Thompson and VMLY&R, but Rochon thinks it’s still bubbling under as a top agency city.

“Atlanta has a soul. There’s something happening here, but it still hasn’t found its own yet,’” said Rochon.

Rochon said that Atlanta is the heart of the South and added that the South is about to rise again, but in a way that the originators of that phrase never expected with the people that they never expected it to rise with.

“Troublemakers come from Atlanta. It’s the only city in the world that has produced a king, a queen and the president—Martin Luther King, RuPaul and Jimmy Carter,” Rochon said with a laugh.

At Hothouse, Rochon wants to build a culture and be a part of culture through its creators.

“Culture is so much more about the people who make it than the things that they make. And Atlanta is full of makers and creators,” said Rochon.

He sees Hothouse as being a place that is an incubator for those creators through partnership and collaboration.

“We’re no longer going to appropriate the things that creators make in culture, we’re actually going to figure out how to connect it in a very different way,” said Rochon, adding that he wants those creators to be fairly compensated through the brands they represent.

Rochon is bringing all of his previous brand knowledge playbooks to the table, including those from Red Bull, Samsung and Louis Vuitton, to collaborate with creators and do it right, as Red Bull has done with its extreme athletes who have helped shape the brand.

Rochon is helping to transform how Hothouse does business to help make the shop be more strategic and culturally minded.

“We as partners to storytellers and brand stewards have to keep a client true to their values,” said Rochon.

Rochon added that we are living in the age of ideas, where actions are bigger than ads and the agency’s role is to teach brands how to act in the age of culture.

“Hothouse’s entertainment marketing heritage means the agency is ideally suited to help brands unlock those authentic connections,” said Rochon.