‘Now is not the time to be shy’: Visual Domain’s CEO Renece Brewster talks pivoting production under COVID-19, and empowering advertisers to speak up

Renece Brewster discusses the challenges of hair-care, home-schooling, and running one of Australia’s most successful video marketing agencies during a pandemic with a reassuring warmth that makes you wish you could break quarantine and go grab a drink with her.  The ineffable chill, though, is somewhat of a ruse.

Visual Domain’s co-founder and CEO Renece Brewster

Throughout her career, Renece has been at the forefront of emerging digital technologies – from her somewhat premature leap into mobile websites (“six months before the iPhone launched” she admits) to the massively successful Youtube-inspired video content hub Visual Domain. At Visual Domain she oversees a team of one hundred creatives in the creation of video content for hundreds of blue-chip clients Australia wide. 

The notion for Visual Domain came about in 2008. Brewster’s business partner Daniel Goldstein was working as a television producer. Brewster was a digital marketer. They joined the dots. “We realized the content he was creating for television had a growing audience online,” says Brewster, “we wanted to see if we could make that an accessible medium for clients.” In 2008 most Australian businesses filed a comprehensive video strategy in the “expensive” and “hard” categories. Visual Domain convinced them otherwise. The company launched during the GFC, which saw them initially specialize in real estate videos with modest budgets and tight turnaround.