Friends Feature: Matt Sutherland
Chester & Friends isn’t much without the friends. We’d really just be a creative company run by our partner AJ’s cat, Chester. Sometimes the friends are clients. Sometimes the friends are our network of creatives. And, sometimes, just sometimes, the friends are us. To kick off the Chester & Friends blog, we thought we’d start with a fitting series introducing the core Chester team (you know, for people looking to kill five minutes of their lunch break not watching something mindless on YouTube).
So, let’s start with our friend in Portland, Pop-Tart eater extraordinaire, Matt.
“Frosted Brown Sugar Cinnamon til I die.”
HBO’s “Barry”
Originally from Houston, Matt’s been (maybe annoyingly) in love with the PNW since he went to Western Washington University in 2009, where he studied English and Film.
Matt’s our food guy. After a pie-making video project he and Jim (one of our other partners) worked on for Driscoll’s in 2015, he was hooked on Food & Beverage work. Since then, he’s worked with a number of F&B brands like CAVA, Timeless Foods, Wood Stone, Tony’s Coffee, Camber, Broder, and Cocktological Evenings, creating numerous video series, marketing campaigns, and hammering out the occasional copywriting project.
"It’s cliche as hell to say, but I love the way food brings people together - even if you’re just there for the food. Oftentimes, I’m the person who is trying everything on the table, not speaking a word, and just being a total glutton. But even for the food motivated people like us, eventually the food runs out and we’re left with the more important thing: community. And that’s why I love working for food clients, lifestyle clients, outdoor, et cetera. All of them have community in common, no matter what the actual event or stated purpose is.”
(He also just loves a good cocktail when he’s not putting on airs.)
For Matt, community and emotion are also the through line to marketing and filmmaking. He, like the rest of us at Chester & Friends, don’t believe in working with brands we don’t believe in. Matt’s work over the span of his career have been all about helping the people and brands he would want to be a part of himself (we often struggle to get him to stay on at Chester after projects wrap, so if you’re a client and he asks to keep working with you full-time, please politely decline him so we can keep him around).
Aside from his work, Matt enjoys his time with his fiancé and their pup Penni in Portland. You can find him out hiking in the gorge, eating bar snacks at Kachinka, or housing some fish and chips at The Toffee Club.
Oh, and if you’re wondering: what’s up with the head shot? Consider it a preview of an as yet unreleased (or filmed!) movie called “Ghost Babies.”
Stay tuned for more Friends Features on the Chester & Friends blog - and let us know if you want to be our friend and join the party.