Going Viral

From a childhood hobby, to a side gig, to an exploding full-time business requiring several employees, twin brothers Luke and Ben Garrison have turned a lifelong love for film into a rapidly expanding and successful media production company.

"Ben and I both came up very, very creative. When we were young, we were the type that would use creativity to get ourselves out of problems, for the most part, from an early age," Luke says.

Perhaps growing up in Southern California's Menifee Valley, about 90 minutes southeast of Hollywood -- as the Garrisons did-- found them more exposed than most to the film industry.

"We used to make stop-motion animation when we were kids with an old VHS camera. We'd work with that, and with toys and all sorts of things  to recreate and tell stories," Luke remembers. "We would write scripts in our backyard and film them. We did it for fun and by the time we were in high school, that was right when TV shows like Jackass, and prank shows on MTV, that kind of thing, was really popular. We thought that seemed a lot more fun than going out and partying. And so we got camcorders made videos all the way through high school and kind of learned editing techniques and all of that."

By then, the Harrison family had moved from the west coast to the Ponca City area. Both Ben and Luke shifted their sights, for a time, to other aspirations.

"We got to college age and thought, well, okay, now it's time for a real job. Ben and I both pursued criminal justice at first. But I still just had a real heart for the arts and changed majors and went into music theater," Luke says. "Really, I was never thinking I was going to make a career out of it. But it would be something fun, and a degree is a degree."

The brothers had enlisted in the National Guard as they went to college. In the wake of the devastation in New York City in 2001, both were deployed to Iraq and Afghanistan.

"We joined essentially to pay for our schooling, but we did it right after 9-11. And so there's just a whole story there," Luke says. "But we did some video edits of our deployment, and when we returned we did a few little things locally here and there to try to showcase and flex that talent. It was still very much just a hobby, but I thought, boy, wouldn't it be great if we could make money at this?"

After getting home from their overseas service, Ben continued his law enforcement career with the Ponca City Police Department, and Luke went into banking. And they also began offering wedding videography locally as a side gig -- their company Speak Now is named for the line heard at every marriage ceremony: "Speak now, or forever hold your peace."

That business did well for the Garrison's, but it was a much different effort that broke the company's success wide open.

Speak Now had further ventured into producing promotional shorts for local businesses, and one of those was the extraordinarily well-received lip sync video for the Ponca City PD.

"We were at the point where we wanted to take on more challenges," Luke says. "So we got (Police Chief) Donnie Bohon on board, and all the city officials, all the people we needed to -- and in 24 hours wrote, staged, and pushed out that content."

The video went viral, and far and wide beyond Ponca City.

"We ended up with something like 3 million views on it, and all of a sudden the phone was ringing off the hook. People were asking 'hey, would you be interested in coming and doing that for us?' and of course, we were."

Speak Now had turned from a side gig into a full-time business, perhaps quicker than the Garrison's had anticipated. Soon, Luke would leave his banking position to run the company full time.

"Ben and I realized that we were at a point where we really needed to bring on somebody full time to help manage it if we were going to stay in our careers. So we hired Ashley Ballinger, who was our first employee is still with us today," Luke says. "Then, with the help of the Development Authority and Pioneer Tech we were able to get into an incubator space. We would work in our downtime in the evenings and weekends, and that went on for a couple of years as we continued to grow both our content and our local lists of clients. And as we started to grow, it became obvious that if that growth were to be sustainable either Ben or I was going to have to leave our career and actually come on full time and start working. We decided that between the two of us, obviously he had a pension he was working toward, and I could move my retirement."

Speak Now produced a monthly web series, working with the Chamber of Commerce. Those efforts morphed into still more projects that were being shown on local broadcast television markets including Oklahoma City, Tulsa, and Wichita. The quality of the work has been its own marketing campaign.

"We were working primarily with our Ponca City clients, but looked to expand our wings a little bit. And just kind of from word of mouth, we've done projects all over the country. We've done music videos in California, weddings in Long Island, we've filmed church camps in multiple cities and states from a regular client... we do a lot of projects of all kinds."

Award winning projects, even. Speak Now Productions has won multiple Silver Telly Awards for advertising, and a Redbud Award for their outstanding efforts to serve and promote Oklahoma's tourism industry. Having outgrown their initial facility, Speak Now Productions moved into its own location on Grand Avenue in 2020 and now has several full-time employees.

In a parallel pursuit that dovetails with his company, Luke also is very active with the Evan's Children's Academy, and he serves as the president of the Poncan Theatre.

"I became involved the Poncan because of my daughter going to the Evan's Academy originally," Luke says. "But like I said earlier, too, I've always had a love for theatre, and performed in the theatre several times as a teenager and into early adulthood. And as I became more involved and worked my way into the president's seat we started coming up with new ideas and opportunities."

Leading to the gala event and movie premiere held last October for Killers of the Flower Moon with the support of Carl and Brenda Renfro, marking the first time in more than 20 years that the Poncan has shown a newly released film.

"First run movies was always kind of a desire for us. So when Carl came up with the idea we jumped at the chance," Luke says. "It was a great way to promote the theater."

Speak Now continues to grow, as having an online presence is now every bit or more important than even having a shingle hung out on a storefront.

"It's vital for any business or entity to have an online marketing presence. It's the new front door, or window, into your company. If you don't have a social media presence, you might as well close your doors because they're going to think you're closed anyway, " Luke says. "The video industry has just exploded with short form content -- on YouTube, on Facebook, on TikTok -- and we understand that and can translate it to our customers. Most have no idea how to do that themselves, but we are able to produce strong, solid content that is on message and relevant in modern media. And we can make it relatively affordable when it comes to a

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