Hire for intent: how Epic Content makes brands sound human

From spreadsheets and consulting to storyboards

Ten years ago, Ajay was closing systems integration deals and Prianka was deep in government consulting. Neither was in marketing. Today they run Epic Content, a communications agency that has just added Jindal Power Ltd to its client roster.

In an interview with Afaqs!, the founders describe the move as a leap born of frustration. Two marketing degrees were, as they tell it, gathering dust while middle management ticked off other people’s tasks. The insight they acted on was sharper: tech companies were often brilliant at building things and poor at explaining why anyone should care.

The founding bet: translate, don’t decorate

Epic Content’s early positioning filled two gaps. IT companies were drowning in dense content that nobody outside their own office could decode. Organisations wanted to go digital but had no map for how. The agency’s answer was to translate product logic into human relevance, not to add more jargon.

That distinction still matters for brand managers. A brand voice is not a vocabulary choice; it is a decision about whose mental model you respect. If the customer has to decode you, you have already lost the attention battle.

What changed in a decade

Some things shifted at Epic Content: the founders admit they moved from founder-led decisions to actively taking notes from Gen Z talent on formats and execution. What they say has not budged is a client-first ethos.

• Ask what the plan is for your brand, not what they did for a bigger client.
• Look for proof of real, employee-led stories rather than polished corporate scripts.
• Treat marketing as root-building before fruit-plucking.

The 2.5 million view lesson

Their latest reel is closing in on 2.5 million views. It was made entirely by employees and captures the gap between the energy they walk in with and the energy they leave with. The founders call it pure satire with zero corporate filter, and describe the thinking as employees as participants, not the audience.

That is the behavioural idea underneath the metric. Participation creates identification, and identification creates sharing. Audiences can sense when real people are speaking as themselves rather than reading a script.

Hire for intent, not the logo wall

The founders’ advice to CMOs is direct: ask what an agency would do for your brand, not what it did for someone bigger and shinier. As they put it, “Hire for intent, not the logo wall.” They also reject the pluck-the-fruit view of marketing. Viral moments may arrive overnight, but they usually sit on a long, unglamorous build-up nobody applauds.

For brand leaders, the useful framework is to audit agency partners the way you audit creative: on relevance, distinctiveness and proof of behaviour change—not on the prestige of past clients.

Source: Afaqs!