A Storyteller At Heart
Deep rooted, passion-driven creativity.
The Beginning
As the son of a cartoonist and art teacher, Samuel credits his upbringing as the middle child in a big family of four brothers and three sisters, for his innate desire to tell better and more captivating stories.
For as long as he could remember, he wanted to tell stories when he “grew up” and a staple of his childhood was his access to a macintosh computer — When other kids were out plying sports, and he was powering up the computer and developing websites, videos and graphics.
Samuel O’Connell started his career in advertising at 14 years old, working part-time designing ads for a local magazine company — and for the past 20 years he has been honing his skills.
The Creative Process (Storytelling)
Samuel’s first love is filmmaking. In 2011, he produced a semi-autobiographical feature film titled “Milk Mustache.”
Following the production of Milk Mustache, Samuel returned to his home town of Wilkes-Barre Pennsylvania, and developed a “filmmaking approach” to marketing. With this approach, the objective is to lead an audience through a marketing campaign much like a director leads a viewer through a film — using the power of a three act structure.
This filmmaking approach to marketing led him on a journey from freelancer to Chief Creative Officer and Co-Owner of a boutique marketing agency, Coal Creative.
Fresh from developing and launching the innovative music-scene app “Tunefly”, which won the “Wildcard” award at the 2017 Business plan competition, Samuel started his journey at Coal Creative, a marketing agency based in Northeast Pennsylvania.
At Coal Creative, Samuel developed the team’s video department and ultimately set and led the creative vision for the company during its years of tremendous growth. He also was instrumental in the implementation of the retainer collaborator program which created a layer of stability for the young company.
Due to his leadership at Coal Creative, in 2021, The Northeast Pennsylvania Business Journal named Samuel to its Top 20 Under 40 Business Leaders list. In 2020, he was named the Greater Wyoming Valley Chamber of Commerce Cultural Ambassador of the Year for his philanthropic work with NEPA Creative, an initiative founded by Samuel and Holly K. Pilcavage, also of Coal Creative.
Personal Awards & Recognition
Passion Projects
To hone and evolve his set of creative skills, Samuel is constantly developing passion projects that go beyond, but often involve marketing.
From film projects and nature photography, to music albums to seasons of online television — Samuel has grown into a confident creative human in no small part due to the constant creation of ambitious passion projects.
As a rule, he tries to produce at lease one major passion project each year. 2024 was the year of nature photography and videography, and saw the launch of “Sams’s Birds”, a social media persona that brought levity and humor to the act of bird watching. In 2023 it was the horror short “Siren’s Song”, which was a music and water based film set in the 1980’s.
Community Focused Philanthropy
As a young adult, Samuel left Northeastern Pennsylvania to explore and grow, with the feeling that the region did not have the culture to support his passions, goals and ultimately — dreams. Since returning home over ten years ago, he has made a dedicated effort to move the region forward for current and future generations.
Samuel serves on the boards of the Greater Wyoming Valley YMCA and the Rainbow Alliance and was instrumental in developing the annual Pridefest Parade and Celebration — which in its first year, broke the record for most-attended parade in Wilkes-Barre history.
In his free, non-creative time, Samuel spends time at home with his Partner Holly, their two dogs, three cats and pot-bellied pig.
