Placing Brands in Culture: Meet the Production Company with a SOFTSPOT for Talent

SOFTSPOT Co-Founders Vertel Scott & Tomás Whitmore

In 2006, the cultural rules of the internet were still being written. It was an era of Myspace, the cusp of YouTube’s domination, and the early stages of the blogging boom. It was also a time when Tomás Whitmore and Vertel Scott, the then-future co-founders of creative production company SOFTSPOT, were cutting their teeth as interns at the top production companies in Los Angeles.

“In L.A. at that time, we were in the middle of what was called the ‘blog era’ of rap - a music scene built around DIY content that would eventually pave the way for artists like Kendrick Lamar”, recalls Tomás. “That gave us a sense of what was possible in culture in the digital age. And we grew up with that - it’s the foundation that SOFTSPOT is built on”.

Having first met on the frontlines of the digital revolution in mid 2000s Los Angeles, Tomás and Vertel worked as a mix of directors, producers, and creative directors across the worlds of agency, direct-to-brand, and production before founding their own company at the outset of 2023. That keen sense for tactile, smart, and culturally-relevant filmmaking has endured; and it’s now welded to a storytelling instinct that helps SOFTSPOT place brands firmly within culture in a way that doesn’t come off as try-hard or confected.

“We wanted to make work with truth and personality, and we had a vision that we could do something slightly different with the talent we had access to”, elaborates Vertel. “At the time we started SOFTSPOT, there was a huge buzz around diverse perspectives and storytelling in the wake of the pandemic era, and how that could imbue brands with strong, distinctive flavours. That’s still our focus, and we’ve developed a roster that delivers on that”.

That focus allows the company to truly lean into its talents’ take on, and place within, broader culture. “A lot of production companies have a director or two that are tapped in culturally, but as a company they don't always reflect those values. We're not that”, asserts Tomás. “We pride ourselves on being tapped-in. We have a finger on the pulse and push for our director's work to reflect that. We want the kind of work that allows our director's understanding of the world, their tastes, and their point of view to sing”.

“We aren't just trying to loan out ‘cool’”, adds Vertel. “We want to make work with brands that understand the impact it's having and its place within culture”.

When it comes to the company’s roster, Tomás and Vertel have - with some justification -taken a less-is-more approach. “Something that’s never sat right with me is how a director can be traded around like a commodity”, explains Tomás. “We’re not super interested in building up a huge roster of directors who haven’t even met each other. Every director on our roster has a distinctive taste, and a real footing in an interesting cultural space outside of filmmaking. They all add up to make SOFTSPOT what it is. Each of them is, to borrow a sports analogy, foundational to our franchise in the same way many of the directors we assisted in the mid 2000s were foundational to their companies”.

One example of this is director and photographer Josefine Cardoni’s work for WHOOP with the track and field Olympian Sha'Carri Richardson. The film comes alive with personality and charm, allowing it to blend aspiration with a feeling of being grounded in someone’s lived reality. 

SOFTSPOT’s formula is a recipe to produce brand identities for which audiences have, well, a soft spot. Personality combined with taste breeds distinctiveness, and that’s ultimately how the co-founders see brands standing out amidst the noise and clutter of the digital era they’ve grown up alongside. It’s an approach which won recognition with a slew of wins at the 2024 Clio awards, with prizes for Step Into The Story for WWE2K24, Don’t Ask Suarez for Michelob Ultra, and Tiafoe vs The World for the launch of TopSpin 2K25. 

Another example of this playing out in practice is director Hannan Hussain’s recent work for Jordan in partnership with Travis Scott. The Mad Max-infused film has already racked up comfortably more than ten million views. 

“This project, along with a few others, is a great example of how our roster is truly tapped-in and how the work we're making connects back to our passions”, notes Vertel. “In Hannan's case, he started as a photographer at Rolling Loud, which is considered the largest Hip-Hop festival in the world. There he covered the backstage antics and performances of rappers, and there’s no doubt that experience helped him to capture the tone you see in this work”.

In a sense, there’s something that feels refreshingly traditional about the way SOFTSPOT works as a production company. Not in its talent and storytelling, which are resolutely fresh, but in the role the company sees itself playing both for its directors and its clients. It’s un-transactional, instead operating as a playground for the talent on its team, and a committed creative partner for clients. It gives the company a tangible identity - something it also seeks to achieve for the clients it works with.

Identity Within Emotion

“Everyone has brands they have a ‘soft spot’ for, and that they’ll be instinctively more likely to look out for”, remarks Tomás. “And when you drill down into why that is, it’s very often because they identify with the brand in some way. Maybe because of its style, or how the brand presents itself. But this concept of identity is a really important driver”.

Tomás goes on to recall how his first-ever filmmaking experience was with focus groups, recording their conversations for marketers to chew over. “I saw how people thought about and discussed their identities”, he says. “What you’d often find in an advertising context is that brand strategy frequently gets built around a concept that feels half-formed. Someone in a focus group might say “XYZ is important to me’ and suddenly creative work would end up getting built around that. But this can feel two-dimensional - I think what our roster at SOFTSPOT does so well is capture real, multidimensional feelings and portraits of the world and people in it”.

It can be tricky to pin down, but style and distinctiveness are a core part of the equation. SOFTSPOT’s approach unlocks the power of ‘identity’ not as something divisive or politically abrasive, but as a memory device. We remember the people, and brands, with strong identities - especially those we connect with or aspire to. It’s how we all, fittingly, develop a soft spot for something. Because it means something, and it means something to us.

The company is no stranger to filming with meaning. Another stand-out example is Tomás’ work with Pepsi, ‘Indecisive’. “Back in highschool, I made a lot of videos of my friends who were dancers, and off those I was hired to film and edit an ethnography on youth culture for PepsiCo back in 2000”, he recalls. “So it was a full circle moment shooting dance in a Pepsi spot, it felt very organic and rooted in my experiences”.

Meaning, personality, and identity. Maybe it’s because Vertel and Tomás were there at the start of the internet’s emergence into wider culture, and the ascendancy of content as king, that they understand the importance of that trifecta so profoundly and instinctively. They also talk enthusiastically about the brands for which they themselves have a soft spot (“I can’t get enough of On Running right now”, confesses Vertel). They know how this stuff works, because it’s something that they feel within themselves.

And the longer SOFTSPOT’s team keeps working, the more of us will feel it, too.

SOFTSPOT Co-Founder & Director Tomás Whitmore, Director Hannan Hussain, Co-Founder Vertel Scott.