Coming in Handy

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Counting calories? An app can help you. Managing your stock portfolio? There’s an app for that, too.

“App” – short for application – is computerspeak for software tailored for specific use.

The demand for applications that can be used on smart phones such as the iPhone, BlackBerry and devices using the Android platform is growing. One company that’s climbed aboard the app express is Santa Monica’s Branded Research LLC.

The application development and marketing firm, co-founded by Matt Gaffney and Rhett McNulty, first began making applications for social networking sites such as Facebook. For example, they developed a Facebook app that lets computer users interact with celebrity gossip magazine Us Weekly and an app for a social networking site called BoomJ.com that let users upload vacation photos. But the cash didn’t follow.

“We started with Facebook apps and had success,” Gaffney said. “But it was hard to monetize them, and we realized we weren’t going to make enough.”

So, the pair shifted to smart phone applications, and thanks to some personal connections in the celebrity world, their apps got some media attention.

One of the company’s most popular apps, iWakeUpCall, serves as an alarm clock and sends wake-up calls from R&B singers Omarion and Marques Houston, or video greetings from sexy women.

In addition to creating the apps, Branded Research develops marketing strategies and provides clients with data about how often app users download their content and how they use it.

Combined with the data, their background and experience helps them advise clients on how to refine a marketing message.

“We get involved conceptually with what the brands want to do,” Gaffney said. “We know what has the best chance of working, from user interfaces to design aspects.”

Tony George, a Kansas City, Mo.-based professional sports handicapper, called on Branded Research to create an iPhone app that gives the odds on professional and college athletics in addition to live game scores. The app, which will be available later this month, can be downloaded for free. It comes with one free tip on Las Vegas odds. If gamblers want to subscribe, the cost is $4.99 a week or $19 per month.

George said he had checked with three or four other companies before picking Branded Research.

“Every single one of them was offshore and didn’t grasp what I wanted my business model to be,” George said. “Branded Research knew about the branding, cross-promotion and what was going to work and not going to work from the solutions-based standpoint.”

Gaffney and McNulty also want to go beyond the use of celebrities in gimmick apps such as wake-up calls. They’ve been pitching corporations with ideas for applications specifically tailored for company needs.

Gaffney offered the example of an engineering company that could commission an application that would be downloaded to company-issued BlackBerrys and allow employees to take photos of a particular object that is being inspected on a worksite. The photo would then be processed by the app, which could then provide details about the object’s height, width or construction.

Harry Wang, a researcher for Dallas-based Parks Associates, said Branded Research has a good chance of success once it convinces companies to work with the firm as mobile technology advances.

“More and more companies are trying to get employees a phone they can use at work,” Wang said. “So to tailor an application and to target enterprise customers is a logical step.”

Social networking

L.A. natives Gaffney and McNulty met in 2005, became friends and then decided to go into business together. They funded Branded Research with about $25,000 in their own cash savings. They didn’t seek venture capital because of a desire to operate the company with a greater degree of independence.

“When you don’t have venture capital backing, people look at you and say you are not legitimate,” said McNulty who often works 16-hour days alongside Gaffney, mostly on the marketing side: Their employees do the technology work on smaller projects, and they contract out for app development to freelancers and bigger companies when needed. “But we can also say we are profitable, and when we want to make changes we don’t have to go through other people.”

Facebook caught their attention as its growth moved beyond the college crowd. Gaffney and McNulty thought they could develop apps that would allow companies to promote their products to the site’s 300 million users. But instead, the pair found themselves trying to convince executives that Facebook applications could help them increase sales.

McNulty said that working with marketing executives and agencies was frustrating because no one was willing to step up and give a green light to a social networking project.

So they switched their focus to smart phone applications – although they still make Facebook apps – and played up the celebrity angle.

Branded Research’s team of four app developers works out of Howard Hughes’ original office at the Santa Monica Airport, taking the occasional movie break at the office’s 35-seat theater. The company’s first success was an iWakeUpCall app featuring Vinnie Jones, an English soccer star now known for his acting in movies such as “X-Men: The Last Stand.”

Working with celebrities may have helped the company get attention, but it’s also the cause of some headaches.

“They are on their own time and expect everything for free or at reduced rates,” McNulty said. “And everyone, from managers to attorneys, has to have their say.”

Branded Research makes the majority of its apps for Apple’s iPhone platform. That’s because the Apple App Store is the most heavily visited site with apps available for download. It’s expected to offer some 100,000 apps by the end of this year, according to San Francisco mobile phone application research firm Flurry Inc.

Branded Research charges clients $5,000 to make basic apps and up to six figures for more complicated and time-consuming apps. The company also provides free maintenance during the lifetime of an application.

Since getting into the smart phone app business, Gaffney and McNulty have learned that a large part of the process is navigating Apple’s application approval process.

Apple reviews each app to determine whether it is offensive, obscene or violates any other of the company’s restrictions. Apple will sometimes send an app back to the developer and request revisions. The developer can resubmit the revised version and get approval, or requests for more revisions.

Gaffney and McNulty know that it can take months for an app to receive final approval. They warn clients about the lengthy wait.

“We try to underpromise, but you can only underpromise so much,” Gaffney said. The longest Branded Research has had to wait for approval: four months for the company’s iWakeUpGirls app. That’s because the app features 11 different female models, some in bikinis, and Apple made multiple requests for revisions.

But the wait time hasn’t deterred Gaffney and McNulty yet, and they are continuing on the app path. Branded Research is working on an app for a software dictation device that could be used by college students to help translate lectures into notes.

“We are transitioning from solely entertainment -based to business enterprise apps,” Gaffney said. “There’s more money it, and people know what they want – you can build to spec – and are easier to work with.”

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