We would love to welcome you to Engage’s Cohort 13 CEO Stories! First up, we are excited to introduce you to Andrew Levy, co-founder and CEO of AdPipe!
“We spent ten years as filmmakers telling great stories for great companies. But over that time, we saw a pretty consistent problem, which we called the great underutilization of video”, Andrew says.
The idea for AdPipe was born from Andrew’s personal experience with a growing problem in his industry–his clients would capture dozens of hours of amazing video footage but only use a few minutes of it. The depth of the problem became clear after he and his partner, Sam Birdsong, partnered with a Fortune 500 firm and acquired 50 hours of footage that was utilized only once for a 90-second video. The unused footage highlighted an incredible opportunity to repurpose existing video footage and tell new stories for these top brands – at a higher engagement level, efficiency rate, and lower cost. With AdPipe, Andrew and Sam have turned their vision of helping more large companies elevate their storytelling with motion-first content into reality.
Andrew argues that “Marketers are under-resourced and overburdened. It’s time to change that. We built AdPipe to make motion accessible to all”. Using AI computer vision, AI-assisted workflow automation, and a shared asset library network, AdPipe provides an entire end-to-end solution that enables businesses to lean into video content by removing the common barriers that have kept them from doing so in the past.
Early on, one of AdPipe’s most visible and exciting customers was a leader in the heavy equipment manufacturing industry. Previously, a single video would have cost businesses like theirs tens of thousands of dollars to produce, and the post-production process would have taken weeks just to deliver a single video. After adopting AdPipe, the customer’s brand team was able to create 10 market-ready videos in minutes, using the same footage from that initial shoot. They were then able to distribute those videos to local affiliates who could easily localize them.
“AdPipe has evolved into a hub-and-spoke video automation and distribution platform for hub-and-spoke businesses,” says Andrew. “The customers who use it, and those becoming familiar with it, are finally able to see a way to lean into video and break through the barriers that have been holding them back for some time.”
Andrew’s professional background includes diverse roles at Live Nation, where he held positions like Director of Sponsorship and Sponsorship Coordinator, collaborating with high-profile talent and managing sponsorship for a major venue and as a Senior Advisor at The Music Group, where he executed digital and social media marketing campaigns for renowned performers, and devised marketing strategies based on demographic data. Most recently, Andrew and Sam Birdsong co-founded Chispa House in 2013. Levy obtained a BA in Economics and Corporate Strategy from Vanderbilt University.