Portal A's Kai Hasson, Nate Houghtelling and Zach Blume
Portal A’s three founders came to the world of advertising without experience in 2005.
Actually, their journey started before then. As the company’s website notes, It all started on a playground in the ‘90s. That’s when executive producer Nate Houghteling, creative director Kai Hasson and managing partner Zach Blume first met. Over time, the trio witnessed the birth of the World Wide Web and YouTube. The latter, which launched in 2006, would prove most defining for the agency.
As of 2020, Portal A is probably best known for YouTube Rewind, a compilation it has run since 2011. The agency has also worked with Lenovo, Google, Clorox, Target, Lyft, Infiniti, Major League Baseball, Amazon and HBO, among others. Its content has been viewed over 2 billion times.
Portal A has also become known for its work in the political space. This year, Portal A partnered with the Biden for President campaign to launch a social media initiative called #ImVotingFor.
The current campaign follows the 2016 push for Hillary Clinton in which it tapped three YouTube creators to inspire their audience, especially in swing states. The agency was happy with the videos, but not the scale. The prompt #ImVotingFor is an attempt to remedy that by encouraging users to pose that question to friends and loved ones.
That effort includes support from Barack and Michelle Obama, Kamala Harris, Amy Schumer, Jessica Biel, Mindy Kailing, and more – to distribute the #ImVotingFor campaign to 150m+ followers on Instagram, challenging fans and followers to join the effort.
Portal A describes the effort as, “a social media campaign putting the stakes of the 2020 election in human terms, encouraging people to share their heartfelt motivation for voting.”
American Pathogen, a documentary on the Covid crisis
Among Portal A’s other political campaigns include American Pathogen, a 31-minute documentary that chronicles President Trump’s response to Coronavirus. The film has been called “informative and damning” by admirers.
Portal A also partnered with The Collective, an organization dedicated to fixing the issue of political underrepresentation in the black community, on a voter registration initiative called #VoteToLive that leverages social media influencers who speak directly to young people of color.
Blume said that not even Covid has slowed the agency down. “Overall, I haven't seen a productivity drop off with our team at all since the pandemic started, which is something I never could have expected,” said Blume. “I do think that 2020 has completely upended the nature of how we work, and that change isn't going away anytime soon.”
