Elise and Gregg Jaffe were all grins as 75 friends, family, vendors, freelancers, and clients celebrated their Chicago-based Big Teeth Productions’ five-year anniversary as a one-stop production shop.
The husband-wife duo described their momentous occasion with one simple word ? surviving. “We’ve scraped and clawed and come out alive,” says Elise Jaffe. “We’re really proud.”
Big Teeth Productions (BTP) landed its first “real” Twitter job with deal-of-the-day Chicago phenom, Groupon, last year. They produced two videos in a business-to-business campaign that features business owners who work with the Chicago-based Ecommerce website.
Big Teeth also created Groupon’s video that announced this year’s “Live Off Groupon” winner, Josh Stevens.
The couple capitalized on the Groupon’s web video by pouring their non-existent marketing budget into building a social media presence on Twitter and Facebook.
Creative director Gregg Jaffe, formerly an account executive at Ogilvy & Mather, weaned himself down to just an hour per day of site updating for nearly 2,000 followers. Their strategy, he says, “is paying off in spades.”
Earlier this year, executive producer Elise Jaffe, launched a children’s episodic web television series, “Fooditude.” She and co-executive producer, Jodi Balis, believe the content will revolutionize kids’ attitudes and eating habits.
Later this month, Jaffe and Balis, will launch the first in a series of educational curriculum to accompany “Fooditude.” They seek local schools to pilot the health and nutrition program.
Big Teeth rolled out more than 125 videos in the past three years for Navteq alone. Their latest work features an instructional video, “Navteq Natural Guidance: GPS for Real People, a September product release for direction seekers.
Big Teeth is located in a 1,500-sq. ft. Lincoln Square studio in 2008. The space has three Final Cut Pro stations, and an office and meeting area shared by social media consulting business, Lightspan Digital.
“We do everything,” says Elise Jaffe, “from concept, storyboarding, scripting and design. Animation is a big part of our work.”
The Jaffes have seen 2011 as the year of expansion. They are hiring a staff member, producing more episodic content, and continuing to work for agencies, production companies and small companies just getting on the web.
Their clients include Navteq, the Chicago History Museum,Timeless Toys, Edelman Digital and Barcelona Creative Group.
Says the 24/7 couple: “It’s impossible to separate us as a couple from our business. It’s the third member of our relationship.”
Big Teeth Productions is located at 4306 N. Lincoln; phone, 773/588-5997. See
