Conversations with Dustin T. Pagliughi

Today we’d like to introduce you to Dustin T. Pagliughi.

Dustin, we appreciate you taking the time to share your story with us today. Where does your story begin? 
I got my start in the entertainment industry working as a production assistant for Entertainment Tonight in 2003. Through the years, I started learning and fell into a producer role for a clip-styled television show in 2004. This was back when we had to find the owners of content and send paper agreements in order to license their content for shows. From there, I absolutely fell in love with the found content style of programming. From there, I produced over 1,000 hours of tv programming. I worked at a company that needed an offering for found content in the advertising sector, so I was tasked with building that program from the ground up. Once I started that process, I was able to develop and put a workflow structure in place that our partners seemed to really enjoy. In 2018, exited that company and started interviewing to be an advertising agency producer at multiple agencies. When I would take these interviews, every conversation with the employer came back to my expertise in found and User-Generated Content. That’s when I made the decision to start Locomotive Content to help service partners across the industry. 

I’m sure it wasn’t obstacle-free, but would you say the journey has been fairly smooth so far?
Absolutely not. Starting a business is not easy. You need to develop processes, navigate compliance, find good employees, and be able to complete work on time and within budget for your partners. Getting these partners to believe in you is also a tricky thing. 

I think one of the biggest struggles while getting started was getting the Locomotive Content name out there. I spent countless hours reaching out to potential partners trying to share what we do, with no responses. It affects you physically and mentally. 

As you know, we’re big fans of you and your work. For our readers who might not be as familiar, what can you tell them about what you do? We discover/curate/clear and license content to leverage for advertising. We are known primarily as user-generated content specialists. 

I’m mostly proud of the diversity of projects that we’ve completed over the past 5.5 years. We have a very unique approach to finding content that fits a specific brief and believe that there is no better judge of what content might fit than the human eye. 

We’re different than our competitors. We’re strictly service-based. We believe the content licensing fees should be passed directly to the creator since they are the ones who did that initial work. We cut out any markup for our partners. We also chose to keep our agency a boutique so that our partners have a very custom experience and get answers to their questions in a timely manner. We evaluate each project separately and will only take on the work if we believe the end goal to be deliverable. A lot of companies will sign on to do the work without flagging obstacles in the beginning, which leads to a change in the creative along the way. Partners typically do not want to change a concept that they thought of mid-project. I actually work on the projects as well to a certain extent. I like to be involved and very often take on the role of the creative director from the Locomotive Content side, approving content before it’s put in front of our partners. I’m a creative by trade and nature, and I love to watch our partners’ ideas take shape over the course of the project. 

Do you have any advice for those looking to network or find a mentor?
I believe that having empathy is a huge driver for networking. Put yourself in the partner’s shoes. Understand their obstacles first. It will help you lighten their load in ways that will be helpful to them, and they will appreciate that. 

Pricing:

• We are strictly service-based, so we quote the scope of work based on the creative, how much content is needed, and what the deadline is.
• Licensing costs are PASS-THROUGH, so if something costs us $1,000 to clear, that’s how much you pay to license it.
• You only pay for what is actually used in the spot. For example, If we clear 10 pieces of content, and you only use 5 – you will only pay for those 5 licenses.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.locomotivecontent.co
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/locomotivecontent/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/locomotivecontent
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/locomotive-content/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@locomotivecontent
• Other: https://vimeo.com/locomotivecontent