Ekiben is one of Baltimore’s most ascendant brands—an entire solar system of quality and cool unto itself.

The young restaurant group has been featured in several national publications and has garnered numerous accolades for its inventive and delicious cuisine. Among other distinctions, they’ve gotten raves in Vogue, been listed by Yelp as one of the 100 best restaurants in America, and were highlighted by Forbes as one of the country’s fastest-growing inner-city businesses.

The truth is, Ekiben doesn’t need help selling food. Their customers already love them, and the food is exactly as good as all the critics and 5-star reviews say it is.

So when we first pitched owners Steve Chu and Ephrem Abebe, that’s where we started.

“Look,” we said, “Everybody already loves Ekiben. But… what if they loved you even more?”

And that was the start of what has been one of our longest-running and most rewarding client relationships to date. Building off their established brand voice and social media presence run by their very talented in-house team, we make content that helps Ekiben connect with the city that keeps looking for reasons to love them even more.

To date, this has included:

• Launching the multiphase video + social campaign that served as the official announcement that Ekiben was expanding to a second location.

• Helping them celebrate their 5th birthday by producing a retro,1980’s-fast-food-inspired TV commercial.

• Marking the occasion of Ekiben winning Best Restaurant and Best Chef in the Baltimore Sun Reader’s Poll with a parody/documentary-style video that imagined a bizzaro universe in which Steve goes all Michael Scott on his business partner, Ephrem.

• Capitalizing on Squid Game’s runaway popularity in a Baoloween video.

Along the way, we’ve imagined entirely new brand backstories, one-off visual identities/logos, and helped an already-great brand grow even bigger.