Town & Country Goes 'Around Town' with New Video Series

ROCHESTER, N.Y. - Founded in 1986 by Matt and Colette Fabry, Town & Country Pest Solutions started out as a family business in Rochester, N.Y. Growing over time, the company has embraced collaboration with its peers in the pest control industry while making a name for itself with a unique approach to content marketing.

Town & Country President Caleb Fabry, son of Matt and Colette, said that learning from and sharing with others in the industry has proven beneficial.

“I don’t look at anyone as a competitor,” he said. “I don’t even want to call them that. I’m friends with other pest control associates and owners. I’ve learned a lot from them.”

Town & Country is a member of The U Group, a pest control peer networking organization made up of nearly 20 pest control companies focused on education, collaboration and training.

“I feel that we have something to offer in our own niche and they also do, so we learn from each other,” Fabry said. “We’re always looking for members and we’re there to help each other.”

The niche that Fabry has shared with The U Group is Town & Country’s rising social media presence and content marketing. The company’s YouTube page now has more than 44,000 subscribers, and millions of views on their successful video series, Around Town.

Launched in December 2022, Around Town is not the company’s first foray in capturing compelling video content. Fabry said that he and his father took an interest in filming their work years ago but were unsure about what to do with the video.

“We always filmed everything,” Fabry said. “At one point, we bought little high-definition camcorders and let the technicians record whatever they had. As technology got better, we started filming with our phones.”

Eventually, the company hired a videographer to shoot and edit content. With an ambitious vision for content creation, Fabry made the decision to go all in on video marketing, hiring Bryan Darrow who is the company’s creative director.

“Bryan worked with our [former videographer] for a couple of months and understood the flow of what we were doing,” Fabry said. “He came in with a very strong background in video, editing and recording.”

Darrow has nearly a decade in professional sport videography but had a heavy workload that made it difficult to consistently create and post content. Feeling unsatisfied, Fabry asked Darrow for an honest answer about what he needed to be successful.

At a crossroads for more help, Darrow recommended his friend and former co-worker, Matt Miller.

“I worked with Matt for almost 10 years,” Darrow said. “We [hired him] six months ago and we’ve just been making a bunch of videos ever since. It’s been fun.”

After the addition of Miller, the two videographers spent a few months planning a production schedule, taking inventory of archived footage and creating new content. Town & Country was then ready to launch its Around Town series with Miller as the host.

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Even as the host of the show, Miller admits he does not know much about pest control. However, this lack of knowledge provided a valuable opportunity for the direction of the series.

“The way we saw it, my curiosity and questions were ones the customer or homeowners would have,” Miller said. “It’s not basic knowledge to me and I make the conscious effort to let the experts be the ones who share the information. I’m just the mediator between the viewer and the technician, to bridge some of these concepts into something more bite sized.”

Fabry is focused on allowing Darrow and Miller to do their jobs without micromanaging content and letting them be creative in the process.

“This is their world,” Fabry said. “We have a good team and to have two people run their department like anything else is the goal. The goal for me, as a businessperson, is to not do their job.”

The trust and freedom that Fabry gave the team has allowed them to create compelling stories and reach a larger audience.

“To have that backing makes our jobs so much easier,” Miller said. “With that component of belief, backing and trust, we’ve been able to really do our thing, making something that’s formulaic, but also adaptable to anything that comes our way.” 

© Town & Country

Darrow echoed Miller’s sentiments about Fabry’s trust in their department.  

“We’ve been getting better as we keep going,” Darrow said. “Just to trust our process has been huge for us to work creatively in the pest control world.”