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Tony Piloseno Creates Connection Through Color
Tony Piloseno is the owner of Tonester Paints, a specialty handcrafted interior paint company in Orlando Florida that started from an unlikely set of circumstances coming from a $22 billion corporation. After a viral video of him sharing his passion, his content exploded to millions of followers, fulfilling his dream to help people connect to the rooms they're in, through color.
Growing up in a small town Tony was always fascinated with advertising on TV. He enjoyed watching different ads and wanting to understand what influences people and why they would purchase a product or service. He wanted to know the emotional connection or impact that made someone want to buy.
“I guess I was always fascinated with advertising in a sense, like watching different TV commercials or seeing different ads and really wanting to understand why. What influences someone to purchase a product or service from these advertisements that you see? What's the emotional connection or impact that makes someone wanna buy a product from an advertisement?”
While he doesn’t consider himself to have been the best student growing up (C average), he always knew that a degree would serve him well in landing a good job opportunity. Upon graduating high school, Tony enrolled at a community college in Cleveland and began working at Sherwin Williams part time.
With a life-long interest in marketing, Tony moved on to Ohio University to get his undergraduate degree in Marketing while remaining at Sherwin Williams.
How paint plays a role in everyday life
Never thinking about it before, he realized how much paint actually plays a role in everyday life. Working at a paint store in his local community opened his eyes to see that every road, house, car, business, product, etc. used paint. It was this realization that drew him in further to the art and purpose of paint.
As customers came in and purchased paint for projects such as local restaurants or other commercial jobs, Tony would see those colors he suggested and mixed while driving down the road. This experience created a stronger connection between him, the community, and the work he was doing.
Tony Piloseno is the owner of Tonester Paints in Orlando
How TikTok changed everything
In 2019, with a goal of building a career at Sherwin Williams, Tony saw an opportunity with a digital platform that was just starting to take off: TikTok
TikTok wasn’t really popular yet, but he found the platform easy to use in editing video, something he had no prior experience with. Working in the small town of Athens, Ohio, the Sherwin Williams store he worked at wasn’t too busy so he figured he’d share (what he found to be cool) the process of mixing paint.
“I just downloaded the app for the first time. No experience with social media content or video editing or anything. So during the slower days in Athens, I thought it would just be fun to show the process of how different paint colors are made. Like which pigments you have to add to achieve certain colors.”
In just six posts Tony’s video went viral getting over 1 million views!
Creating content like “Guess the paint color”, Tony found a connection with his audience by taking them through a journey of mixing colors and engaging them in his process.
His channel took off exceptionally fast, and as a marketing student who wanted to build a career at Sherwin Williams, he felt this was the first step at getting into their marketing department.
Planning his pitch to Sherwin Williams
Working with his professors at Ohio University, Tony developed a pitch deck on how using TikTok would build brand awareness for Gen Z and younger users who may not be thinking about paint but will eventually become customers down the road, benefiting the Sherwin Williams brand.
“I thought that building that brand awareness early through content that people were enjoying, was a fantastic idea to, you know, get the Sherwin name out there more than it already was with a new generation of future painters.” After winning over his direct manager and area sales reps, he received the contact information for the company’s Regional Marketing Director.
Brushed off and fired
At the time this all was going on, the pandemic had started and it wasn’t until 2 months of trying to gain contact, he finally made it through only to be told there wasn’t going to be extra marketing opportunities, ventures, no new ideas. Three weeks later, Tony received a call from the Sherwin Williams loss prevention unit that someone was complaining about his videos. After an investigation, they let him go for gross misconduct.
“I don't think it really deterred me from my ultimate vision. I still knew at that time that the platform that I had built, which was at around a million followers, was still the most valuable asset that I had. They didn't take it away from me or make me shut it down; no cease and desist. So I still had that. I still wanted to keep making the content, showing people the cool process of making different paint colors.”
After a few months, Tony shared his story through video of getting fired and why he loves what he does. That video quickly spread and blew up overnight gathering around 70 million views. For the next couple of weeks Tony was contacted and interviewed by national media. At this point Tony was fielding numerous job offers that in his words were, “All cool gigs.” However, the offer that stood out came from a Winter Garden based company, Florida Paints.
Florida Paints asked Tony if he was interested in starting his own paint businesses with his own line of paints. They further explained that they wanted to give him a manufacturing deal.
In late 2020, Tony moved to Orlando, FL and opened Tonester Paints.
Tony Piloseno works the paint colorant dispenser at his shop in Orlando
"Even Angels Cry" is a signature color of Tonester Paints
Helping people connect to the right palettes
Tony’s emotional connection to his job wasn’t the paint itself, but the aspect of color and engagement with customers. He loved the opportunity to help them develop palettes and an array of colors that, in a sense, connected with them emotionally.
“A lot of people don't realize that color has a big psychological impact on your daily moods, routines. How you perceive a space, what sort of benefits or impacts it can have on your daily routines.”
Having mixed well over 10,000 gallons of paint, Tony has mastered coming up with some of the most beautiful colors that are signature to his artistic expression.
By developing his own colors, Tony found ways to emotionally impact people and benefit them in their homes and businesses. For someone who wants to get work done at their desk, he creates rich, dark, moody colors that help people better focus on the tasks at hand. For living rooms or kitchens where people gather, he focuses on color designs that create an open, comfortable feel.
First impression of Orlando
Before coming down, Tony saw Orlando like many others. He had no idea of the local culture and thought Orlando was just a drive through town to get to Disney.After arriving at the airport, he was immediately taken around town. Right off the bat it was the local business scene that caught his attention. He found small restaurants that he had never heard of and was drawn to the local diversity of people and communities.
With the pandemic pushing all classes online, Tony was able to continue his education with Ohio University while working and launching his company in Orlando. He was even able to tie in what he was doing by doing his senior projects on his own brand, which helped to grow it to where it is today.
As a successful content creator who calls Orlando home, Tony uses his content to connect and grow his relationships locally. He participates in a local content creator group and sees Orlando as a great place that’s positioned well as a creator economy.
Defining the Orlando Life
“I would define the Orlando life as new and exciting. Just being here for only three short years and seeing the growth that has happened in the city. The amount of people that are down here, the amount of support for local businesses has just been super, super cool and very exciting. It's almost like seeing the early part of something big happen and being a part of it.”
