A couple of local marketing professionals and creatives founded Kingston Creative in 2015 because of a desire to help Kingston, Ulster County and the Hudson Valley develop in a positive direction. With a mission of bringing cutting-edge digital and marketing capabilities to the local area, we have enabled close to 100 local businesses, entrepreneurs, job creators and artisans alike in being part of a rising tide in the intersection of marketing, media and local business.
Our Philosophy
We believe in the entrepreneurial values of America. Our region in the Hudson Valley contains many lessons on creativity, invention, prosperity, and a balance of industry and natural beauty that dates back hundreds of years. Even as national and global economic winds ebb and flow, Kingston Creative represents a spark: a small but mighty catalyst that is here to revitalize and reawaken local businesses and connect them with customers.
Win-Win Cooperation
Everyday people are out there, looking for trustworthy information. Local businesses have information, but they need our help to get it out there so it can be found. If we can all work together to meet this need, we can all win.
Rebuilding the Hudson Valley
This was the region that built New York City, brick by brick, and provides much of its electricity and water. We have the capability to build and produce amazing things that benefit the hundreds of thousands of people that live here.
Trust and Respect
To us, business is not a zero-sum game where one party is the winner and the other party is the sucker. A productive business relationship is one where all parties can trust each other and have respect for each others’ talents and competencies.
The Power of Reason & Curiosity
Everyone has the capacity to make incredible discoveries and insights, if we remain curious and open to new ideas. There is always more to learn, and there are always timeless principles of design and philosophy that can be applied to new circumstances.
We love to work with…
New Business Owners
You’re getting everything together to launch the business of your dreams, and need the foundations of branding, a logo and a solid website that can grow to get started.
Established Small-to-Medium Businesses and Organizations
You’ve built a successful business or organization with a viable business model, and you’re looking to add fuel to the fire with marketing and a more optimized website that leads to specific conversions and actions.
Political and Ad Campaigns
You’re embarking on a journey that has a start date and an end date, and need branding, strategy, a website, and content to let people know about it.
Here are some highlights from over the years.
Kingston Creative Opens
Our first office was in the Shirt Factory on Cornell Street in Kingston, right across from the Post Office. It was a hub of creative businesses, artist studios, fitness and yoga studios, and loft apartments. Our office had a beautiful view of the CSX train going through Midtown, an echo of the city’s industrial past. We held $10 figure drawing classes where we got to meet interesting people while honing our drawing skills. We also got in really good shape from going up and down the four flights of stairs.
Kingston Creative Goes Viral
We began to make a name for ourselves by finding creative opportunities to show off our content creation skills. Our approach of combining publicly-available data with local geography and interviewees is a great formula for building search engine optimization on Google. Even in the age of AI, you still need to come up with great ideas for blog posts that answer questions that people have. Some of our favorite blog posts were:
Pokemon GO Map of Kingston: In the summer of 2016, Pokemon GO fever took the world by storm. It’s hard to remember a game that brought more people together in real life, inspiring them to walk miles and miles in search of rare virtual creatures and congregating in hotspot locations. To help our community get in on the fun, we had the idea to publish a comprehensive map of every Pokestop and Gym in Kingston. The map went mega-viral locally, and it was shared by everyone ranging from leftist Congressional candidate Zephyr Teachout to the Kingston Police Department.
Hudson Valley’s Most-Instagrammed Places: We also began to flex our data-driven content muscles by creating a series of “Most-Instagrammed” locations articles about Kingston, Woodstock, Beacon, the Hudson Valley, Catskills, Albany, Wappingers Falls, Poughkeepsie, Great Barrington, Esopus and Rhinebeck. We found a source of Instagram geo-data that allowed us to tally up the most popular places for Instagrammers to take pictures. Then, we crowd-sourced an Instagram photo of each location with people’s permission, and interviewed different local people about each place. It made for great listicle content that people loved to share.
Kingston Creative Goes Political
We moved to a much larger office in Uptown Kingston, and with an expanded team, worked on a number of local political races.
Along the way, we published a monstrous study of social media data titled 19 Insights on NY-19 Voters (According to Facebook), which was shared by the beloved Hudson Valley Weather group.
We also studied the amount of local medical fundraising on Gofundme, which was seemingly reaching epidemic levels.
Kingston Creative Goes Hiking
As Kingston’s rents rose, we moved to a smaller office Uptown, and kept working. One of our favorite projects was re-doing the Hike the Hudson Valley website, which was transformed from a popular hobby blog into an optimized publishing platform. That was accompanied by our own blog post, The 11 Hudson Valley Hikes That Get Googled the Most.
Kingston Creative Goes Remote
Even before the pandemic, we started to notice a shift: being an agency that has a physical office, desks and a shingle outside mattered less and less to our clients. We made the decision to transform into a work from home company, passing the savings on rent onto our clients.
Kingston Creative Goes to Work
During the years of the pandemic, we kept our heads down and kept delivering value to new and long-time clients.
Kingston Creative Today
As we approach our tenth year in business, we look back with appreciation for all of our clients and partners over the years, and all of the lessons that we’ve learned. Although the Hudson Valley has changed, business has changed, and digital marketing has changed, our fundamental approach and outlook has not. We are here to enable people and businesses to do special things, and when we do our job right, we will be helping not only our clients, but raising the ability of everyone in our community to do great things.
Ready to get started?
