Brian Eloe’s great-grandmother was part of the silver boom, in a little Colorado mountain town called Creede, and his ties to the state could not be stronger. The promo veteran was born in Denver, raised in Denver, and built his entire career in Denver, first as an editor for local companies like Starz and the Hallmark Channel, and eventually as creative director of Impossible for more than eight years. So when Eloe moved to the wildly different city of Miami recently to become 2C Media’s new creative director, he likened the change in environment to “moving to Mars, or the moon.”

But while the geography of Eloe’s ascent through the industry has remained fairly static—and refreshingly removed from industry hubs New York and Los Angeles—his extensive work for clients ranging from Discovery to Animal Planet to the Sundance Channel has turned him, according to 2C president Chris Sloan, into “a triple threat of strategy, creative vision and on-the-ground know-how.” Brief spoke with Eloe from his new digs in Miami about his roots as an editor, the “invitational approach” he brings to his work, and why, despite his success in an outlying city, he believes young creatives should start out in “the biggest pools possible.”

BRIEF: How did you get your start in the promo industry?

BRIAN ELOE: I was the story of starting in the mailroom and working your way up. I started at Starz and Encore, in the tape vault, shuttling tapes and doing that kind of thing. Being there let me interface with a lot of different parts of the company because all the editors come through there, producers, writers, creative types, and what excited me most was the editorial aspect. I actually went to school to be a pilot of all things, and editorial had a similar vibe to it. There’s storytelling and creative, but there’s also a lot of technical aspects, and so I started seeking mentorship from editors at Starz and getting in after hours and things like that. That led to my first assistant editor gig at the Hallmark Channel, which at the time was based in Colorado.

Can you pinpoint a moment early on in your career when you realized you had found what you want to do with your life?

The very first project I had with Impossible in 2004 [was] a network ID launch for a local television station in Colorado called Altitude, [which is basically] Stan Kroenke’s in-house network that has the [Colorado] Avalanche. I’m an abnormally passionate hockey fan, so for me, the project was working on my favorite hockey team’s graphics package. At that point you’re like, “Holy crap it’s a perfect storm of the type of stuff I love.”

Over your career, you’ve ascended from editor to the role of creative director. That’s not a very typical path for an editor, is it?

No. I think what is a more common path for an editor is to get into live action directing. Because I’ve worked at hybrid places, I do a lot of live action directing. If there’s a need, and because I am so intimately involved with all of the creative, it’s logical that I would go after the performance. So that is a more typical path that I have seen – that editors eventually get behind the camera and get the shots they’ve always wanted in their reels of footage.

You have said that you intend to bring an “invitational approach” to 2C. What did you mean by that?

I legitimately and authentically believe in the idea of collaboration and what that means is mutual respect in the creative. I don’t see it so much as a division between client and vendor. I go into every project thinking, “Okay, how can we work together on this?” That’s what I feel the modern era is: A lot of our clients nowadays came from the vendor side. They used to work at a creative agency and now they’re an executive at a channel. You have a lot to learn from them. I have worked with people who really expect the creative director to come in and say, “Here’s what I want, here’s my shot list, here’s the order we do it in.” I prefer the method where you inspire and get an artist to bring something that you didn’t think of.

2C is in Miami, but you grew up in and built your career in Denver, without ever working in Los Angeles or New York. In retrospect, would you still recommend that same path to a young creative who wants to advance in promo but maybe doesn’t want to live in one of the industry hubs?

[Denver] is one of the leading places in the country for creative type industries, not just TV and broadcast, but digital, interactive. It does tend to be much smaller in terms of scale, so the only negative that I would see is that I think it’s probably better to take a chance and experience New York or LA and then go to Colorado, as opposed to starting in Colorado. You need as much input as possible and to get that you kind of need to start in the biggest pools possible. It’s important to cut your teeth in the right way, and learn good habits and learn how hard it is. It’s a really hard business.

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