Overcoast Music (https://overcoast.com) is an award-winning, boutique music and sound house whose partners represent over forty years of combined experience. Founded by a team of composers and sound designers, the company launched in Richmond, Virginia, and now has a studio in London, too. They rely on a network of composers and sound designers from around the world, and have worked for such brands as Kellogg’s, Tide, Geico, the Virginia Lottery, Philadelphia Brand Cream Cheese, Cheetos, Crunch Fitness, Google, Tito’s Handmade Vodka and Solo Stoves, the latter campaign starring none other than the renowned smoker, Snoop Dogg.
Overcoat is now on its second tour with Simian; they were clients a number of years ago, but have since returned to the fold and are super pleased that they did. We checked in with their Head of Production, Matt Whitworth, to see how working with Simian has improved their workflow, bidding and overall efficiency.
What made Overcoast choose Simian for its reel-building and review & approval needs? How has Simian been an improvement over what you were previously using?
Matt: It’s all the little things that add up. Simian is faster, more intuitive, and has features that improve both our workflow and presentation. It feels like a platform that’s actively evolving.
What’s been your experience with Simian’s support in terms of responsiveness and client service?
Matt: Kellie has been incredibly patient with us. We’ll send an email asking how to do something, then five minutes later realize it was actually pretty straightforward. But by then, she’s already written us a helpful response. We just like to keep her busy.
We actually first used Simian years ago, but had to step away due to a workflow issue that wasn’t playing well with the specific way we were replacing audio in video files. When we realized our alternative platform wasn’t evolving, we reached back out to Simian – only to find they had fixed the exact issue we initially made us look elsewhere. This is just another example of them always improving and updating.
What are your favorite Simian features? What aspects of Simian do you find most valuable to your creative process?
Matt: The ability to upload entire folders while maintaining structure is a huge timesaver. Plus, being able to reorder files instead of being stuck with alphabetical sorting makes a big difference. Not often does the order you want the client to review work align exactly with the alphabet.
We’re also really excited about the microsites—they have the potential to transform how we pitch projects, and we’re looking forward to integrating them into our workflow.
If one of your peers at another company asked your thoughts on Simian, what would you tell them?
Matt: As soon as we switched, a few of our clients asked how we were finding it – many of them were still using the same old platform we had just moved on from. I told them I only wished we’d made the switch sooner. From a workflow perspective, it’s faster, and it allows us to present our work in a much more polished, professional way, ultimately reflecting better on our company.”