Genuine Overkill was Founded in Downtown Las Vegas by Agency Veteran & Creative Director, Stephen Papageorge.
Papageorge is behind more than his fair share of industry best practices, having created gold-standard brand initiatives for brands like Nike, Dos Equis, Jack Daniels, The Macallan, Harley-Davidson, Perrier & Pepsi. His work puts "Consumer Objectives" first, which means it's all rooted in deep insight & solid consumer-centric strategy. Of course, he has lots of industry awards and paperweights. Still, his real talent comes from his love of conspiring & collaborating with a trusted peer network of world-class creators, performers, artists, inventors, storytellers & producers – most of whom do not come from the marketing world.
Papageorge is a lifelong New Yorker but recently moved from Brooklyn to Downtown Las Vegas to launch Genuine Overkill. His attraction to Vegas sparked when he started staying Downtown for business and started to get a taste of the emerging industry & creative communities there. After that, the move was a no-brainer. The energy, the culture, the talent, and the ambition to bring art and creativity to Downtown are inescapable & firing at the highest levels.
Downtown Las Vegas is quietly becoming the Experiential Creative Capital of the World. Genuine Overkill’s ability to tap into the local talent pool will prove our unfair advantage.
Ethically sourced Everything.
Genuine Overkill is a values-driven company. How we work is just as important to us as the work, itself. Our leadership has a long-standing & verifiable track record of producing award-winning work that’s yielded great results for our clients. Success has never been measured by the number of clients we have or our annual billings, but by the quality of our work and the relationships we enjoy with our clients, staff & extended industry network.
We stubbornly work with the best talent in the industry, and we treat them with the same appreciation & respect we show our clients. So, we have immutable standards and practices that guide our work.
Not every client is willing to roll with us – but the ones who do, are the kind we do our best work for. They’re the only ones we’ll work for.
Genuine Overkill pays for the industry’s best talent. We ask that our clients do as well.
We do not engage in crowdsourcing practices.
Crowdsourcing is a practice that reduces our profession into a contest. It may be appealing to have 100+ designers compete for your branding business – but only a tiny percentage of these designers ever make a dime. The practice is eroding the creative field from within & while labor laws haven’t caught up with this practice, we won’t contribute to it.
We don’t do spec.
There’s a common belief that agencies should expect to give away their strategy & creativity in the hopes of “winning” the production business. These economics force agencies to underinvest in the essential parts of the work. It doesn’t work for the agency & it’s also a recipe for spending your good budget against a foundation of low-hanging fruit concepts. While agencies will commonly concede to this practice, we simply won’t. The insights, the strategy & the concepts are the holy grail – they’re the whole reason we’re in this business & we actively seek clients who value and invest in them.
It would be remiss to start a business in DTLV without paying tribute Tony Hsieh. Tony's bold vision, followed by uncompromised execution in partnership with the Creative Community, led to the modern renaissance of Downtown Las Vegas – a living reminder of what can happen when people apply their passion to a common goal. Thank you, Tony. Rest in Happiness.
“Envision, create, and believe in your own universe, and the universe will form around you.” ― Tony Hsieh