Austin Craig (LinkedIn | Twitter) kind of does it all.
He’s a creative: a writer, a marketer, a producer, and a storyteller all wrapped up in one. You might have seen him on the web promoting Orabrush, where he helped bring the views from zero to numbers in the tens of millions by making jokes about bad breath. He’s an expert at mixing story with market-awareness – a strategy that brings awareness to brands in an unprecedented way.
He does his own podcasts and works as a producer for us here at The Mission, runs Marketing at Mainframe, and still found time to sit down and talk to us about his journey, the way learning has shaped his art, and why storytelling will always be his first love.
It all started with a toothbrush. Seriously. “I had a little bit of experience on camera because I’d studied broadcast journalism at school. As you can imagine, it was quite a bit different from, ‘hello, and welcome to the evening news. I’m Austin Craig, here’s the stories for the day.’ It was telling jokes about bad breath on the Internet, what I ended up doing for five years. It started out with me acting, and then acting and writing, and then acting, writing, and directing – and then –producing. And it really opened my eyes to the potential of new systems. We built this multi-million dollar business off of silly web videos and I wouldn’t have thought that possible when we started, but I was working with some really brilliant people who helped me see the potential and helped build that business. Since then, I’ve worked on crowd funding campaigns, I’ve worked in cryptocurrency space.”
And he’s taken a real step into that cryptocurrency space, drawn in by the newness and excitement of a burgeoning game-changer. “When I first heard about Bitcoin, I was fascinated for exactly the same reasons. This was a new system that created entirely new dynamics and nobody has a head start. Any person who hears about this right now can jump in, figure it out, and become the winner in this game.”
Austin set out to know more about this game. “Cryptocurrency was interesting because we kind of assume that money is this ancient eternal fact of the universe – but money was invented. And for a long time –certainly for our lifetimes – it’s seemingly been about the same. Nothing’s really changed. You have cash, you have a credit card, you have a bank account. That’s generally how it works in a developed country. Bitcoin presented entirely new dynamics. You could do business with somebody. You could trade money with somebody. Big or small, from fractions of a penny to many millions of dollars, virtually instantly, with almost no third party interaction. If you’re transferring money anywhere in the world, somebody’s going to take a cut of that. Cryptocurrency made it possible to do business and exchange with people you’ve never heard of, have never met. Just share with them, send money, or send value in a way that cannot be reversed, cannot be interfered with, and can’t really be censored. These were new roles. That’s why these systems, I think, are so fascinating. New roles create new opportunities.”
This new frontier inspired Austin to lean into his curiosity. “I knew that there must be something there worth exploring. Even if I’m not a cryptographer or an economist or any of those technical experts that you would think, normally, should be involved in something like this. I’m a film maker so I ended up making a film about Bitcoin.”
The film was the natural outgrowth of Austin’s new interest and his bone-deep love of film. “I loved movies growing up, but I think that I really got into film in college. I had a class called ‘French and Italian Cinema’ that I took with some friends. It was really just for fun, but we had an excellent instructor. And he showed films to us that I never would have picked out on my own. French new wave films that had a lot to offer but weren’t exactly playing at the local cineplex. And he opened up my eyes to how they were sharing messages in ways that weren’t obvious and how they were construing an image and how they were explaining it. I learned to explore characters and ideas in non-obvious ways. That’s always been really interesting to me. Film – it is like a cathedral. We go there, we are silent, we sit as an audience and partake of this message presented in larger than life manner on the big screen. I think film is one of the most incredible ways to communicate with people in a persuasive fashion, a way that teaches.
The result? A film called “Life on Bitcoin”.
No matter what move he makes next: Twitter, the Mission, movies… you can count on one thing, Austin will be looking for ways to bring story to the forefront.
“We tell stories to teach each other. It’s the native language of human beings. Stories. That’s how we understand the world.”
To catch the rest of the episode, check out our podcast with Austin here.
