By NADIA MARIA SMITH
CS&T Staff Writer
MEDIA – Integrity and honesty are the foundation for Syndicate Pictures.
A full-service advertising and communications company, it offers consultation, branding materials such as business cards, logos and letterhead, and full-scale advertising campaigns involving television, radio, and internet advertising and direct mail campaigns.
“We are experts in the science and art of human motivation,” said Matthew Haas, the cofounder of Syndicate Pictures and a parishioner of Nativity B.V.M. in Media. “Our clients are trying to motivate their audience to do something. If it’s a nonprofit [company], maybe they are trying to increase membership or donations. If it’s a school, maybe they are trying to recruit more students, and so on.
“Some people have a bad view of the advertising world, but for us it really is about connecting the right people to what our clients are offering,” Haas said.
The company’s business philosophy is grounded in the Catholic faith, Haas added: “We won’t do anything in our campaigns that would lessen the value of a person’s dignity,” he said.
That means the company does not use sex to sell products – nor does it use dishonest advertising tactics such as a “bait and switch,” which falsely advertises a product as available in order to lure customers in.
Syndicate Pictures has walked away from lucrative projects because the clients wanted to employ such techniques, Haas said.
He founded the company with Nicholas Repino, a parishioner of Our Lady of Charity in Brookhaven, 13 years ago while the two were still in college.
They had known one another since they were eighth-graders at St. Bernadette School in Drexel Hill. The men went to separate high schools and colleges, but they forged a lifelong friendship and business partnership because of their shared passion for creating music and films.
In fact, they started the company so they could keep doing what they loved doing after they finished college, Haas said. He went to Drexel University and earned a bachelor’s degree in film and video along with a degree in computer science. Repino went to Neumann College and graduated with a bachelor’s degree in communications.
The company works with local and national non-profits, government agencies and commercial businesses to advertise products and services. Clients have included many Catholic organizations such as the International Institute for Culture, the National Catholic Bioethics Center, the Papal Foundation and the National Organization for Marriage.
Haas and Repino have also worked on several government-sponsored education programs targeted to teens, including anti-drug and alcohol campaigns, and campaigns for suicide prevention, safe driving and opposing internet crimes against children.
“You feel good at the end of the day, that the work you are doing is making a difference,” Haas said. His favorite projects, he said, “bring people to the faith.”
Haas is married to Brooke Daley and they will celebrate their eighth wedding anniversary in June. They have five children ranging in age from a 3-month-old to a 7-year-old.
For more information visit www.syndicatepictures.com or call (610) 565-9640.
CS&T staff writer Nadia Maria Smith can be reached at npozo@adphila.org or (215) 965-4614.
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