Exploring Life & Business with Denver Bailey of Enjoy New Media

Today we’d like to introduce you to Denver Bailey.

Hi Denver, so excited to have you with us today. What can you tell us about your story?
I grew up in the middle of a corn field in Indiana. A child of the 90s, obsessed with everything from pop culture to anime. From an early age, I fantasized about being a comic book artist, but all of that took a drastic shift when I got my hands on a camera and made what I called a “movie” for the first time. Throughout my teenage years, I made little short films with my family and friends and eventually found myself studying film at Purdue University thanks to a state scholarship that for the lack of better words essentially put poor kids in promising positions.

I was a dedicated student, by my 3rd year, I was nearly finished with my requirements, but thanks to the scholarship, I had a unique opportunity placed in front of me. My professor Bobby Chastain proposed an idea of moving to Los Angeles and trying to break into the film industry over the course of a semester.

The timing was just perfect. I abandoned a connecting flight while in Los Angeles when returning from a winter trip to China.

No plan. No car. Nothing. I moved into a shared bedroom in South Central off Figueroa. You could say my life was completely turned upside down, but not in the fantastical way like the Fresh Prince… It was quite the opposite.

I was on a mission to break into Hollywood. I quickly secured an internship at a YouTube channel editing videos and said yes to every opportunity that came up.

Now, this rarely – almost never – happens, but within a few weeks I was on the set of Criminal Minds with my first gig as a production assistant. It was a long, grueling day, and by the end of it, some talent had abandoned the shoot. I was quickly thrown on to set to be a glorified extra, purchasing a gatorade from a convenience store.

So, I have Criminal Minds to thank for my first day on set being forever recorded in TV history. Find me in the cold open of Season 9, Episode 18, “Rabid”

The gigs continued to compound for me, and eventually I got a gig working at a commercial production company (Community Films) for a few days. I loved that place, and I knew then, one day, I wanted to build something like it.

I continued working in TV for several years, growing, moving up the ladder, but ultimately launched Enjoy New Media in 2016 with my wife Mengmeng, and then stepped away from TV.

Three years later, I was pretty burnt out, I nearly quit. Our first child was on the way and the business had not quite taken off like I wanted it to. I took several job interviews, but nothing stuck, and eventually I won a project that turned it all around.

I spent my days working with my daughter on my lap as I would edit and pitch commercials, and eventually pitched for my first toy commercial for Jazwares and Cocomelon. This completely invigorated my passion. I went to the store, I bought a bunch of the toys and set up the spot with my wife and we shot test shots of my daughter and wife playing with the toys to assemble the perfect pitch! We didn’t get it. But a few months later, they came back and just handed us a greenlight, and this rolled into a series of projects making toy content for them, and eventually my daughter got to make her acting debut in a Cocomelon spot!

It was a slow and steady process of growth, saying yes to the right projects and no the wrongs ones, and being strong enough to keep coming back day after day when we didn’t win one that we really wanted. Today, we’re a thriving commercial production company that partners with brands globally.

If you were to step into our offices, you’d find a museum more or less dedicated to the 80s and 90s toys and pop culture – a phone booth from the streets of Chicago, a 1981 Donkey Kong Arcade Machine, Proton Packs, light sabers and Power Rangers props. It’s more or less an homage to that kid that was dreaming of something bigger back in the corn fields of Indiana.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Nothing about this has been easy. I’m a firm believer in that the ones who are successful are the ones who didn’t quit. We’ve had setbacks, but they’re often followed by a leap forward. I’m thankful to have an incredibly supportive wife in my corner who believes in what we’re doing and my two children are a constant source of inspiration and motivation.

Most small businesses are consistently 3-6 months from going out of business, and I’d be lying if I said that wasn’t true for us. Every month is a challenge to push the business forward.

People say money can’t buy happiness, but I’ll tell you this, money can buy solutions – tax pros, lawyers, etc and you need all of those people in your corner (shout out Joo Young Kim at Navitax and Ryan Schmidtt Esq.). I have found that most of the challenges that arise when running a business can be solved with a money hose, but when you have no money and no hose, the only solution is to work hard and pray that it all works out.

As you know, we’re big fans of Enjoy New Media. For our readers who might not be as familiar what can you tell them about the brand?
I’m the creative director and founder of Enjoy New Media. We’re a full-service soup-to-nuts commercial production company based in Duluth.

My goal from the start of Enjoy New media was to build a company where creativity could flow without the frustrating bottlenecks of outside contractors – that meant I would need to build a full time team of multi-skilled professionals. We’re currently a team of four and I do see us scaling larger – slowly.

As the founder and creative director, I’ve always believed that control over the entire process is the key to both speed and quality. That’s why securing our own production studio space was a true game-changer. For years, we operated with that inherent friction of relying on external locations. But now, it’s a different story—everything is at our fingertips, ready to go. That freedom, being able to grab a camera and shoot on a whim, is what continuously fuels our team’s creativity, and our clients notice the difference.

I remember a couple of years ago, we landed an incredible opportunity: Warner Bros. needed content for Scooby-Doo’s Scoobtober event. The concept demanded generational sets, each representing a different decade. Building and filming that in a tight timeframe, all under one roof, would have been impossible before we had our own space. Seeing those sets come to life and the finished product deliver exactly what the client needed became a powerful benchmark for us.

What truly fills me with pride, though, is the work we do with global brands, especially in the world of toys. As a certified toy fanatic and a member of the Toy Association, partnering with giants like Hasbro, Jazwares, and Spin Master to create content is always a treat. The biggest reward comes down to our local roots: putting talented individuals in front of our cameras and helping them gain the visibility they deserve. We’re not just making commercials; we’re building careers right here in the metro Atlanta area.

In terms of your work and the industry, what are some of the changes you are expecting to see over the next five to ten years?
The commercial video business often feels recession-proof; when consumers tighten their spending, businesses typically increase advertising and marketing to encourage sales.

However, the rise of generative AI is now emerging as a form of competition. From our experience though, AI is not a replacement. While it can produce passable results, the time investment required to just get “passable” often is far more than expected, so why not get exceptional results by investing in us.

I firmly believe our industry is moving toward working with AI, not being replaced by it. AI can enhance our capabilities, such as improving video and audio quality with enhancement tools, but it will not fully substitute human creativity and expertise.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.enjoynewmedia.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/denverbailey
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/enjoynewmedia/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/denverbailey/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/@enjoynewmedia
• Other: https://www.instagram.com/enjoynewmedia/?hl=en