Ripple, an El Segundo-based screen advertising company, is getting book smart.
The company, which places liquid crystal display screens featuring revolving slides of the weather, stock quotes and ads at various retail points, has a new client with the signing of the Borders chain.
Ripple programs local ads into 1,000 LCD screens in stores across the country, with the advertising customized based on location.
Borders will be getting two 42-inch high-definition screens in each of its 250 stores in the country’s largest markets. Ripple will stream performances from artists including Joss Stone and Patty Griffin and interviews with former President Clinton and director Wes Anderson.
The screens will also feature advertisements bought by spas, dry cleaners and other local businesses within a couple miles of each participating stores.
The content would be markedly different from those Ripple provides its other clients, including the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf, Tully’s Coffee, Jack in the Box and Jiffy Lube.
“We understand that at coffee shops, especially in the mornings, we are targeting on-the-go individuals who want reports on the local traffic, weather and stock market, or which bands are playing in their neighborhood that night,” said Alex Nocifera, the company’s founder and vice president of sales. “At Borders, people are more willing to pause and see a two-minute video about Bill Clinton on his latest book or an interview with a best-selling author.”
Ripple’s content partners include ESPN, Reuters, E Entertainment, the New York Times, Yahoo Inc., CBS and Clear Channel Communications Inc.
Founded in 2004, the company of 50 employees recently brought Briggs Ferguson, former chief executive of Citysearch, to its board. It has raised $15 million in venture funding to date from Draper Fisher Jurvetson and Trinity Ventures, early investors of Starbucks and Jamba Juice.
College Try
It’s a kind of social networking that’s productive.
TheClic.net, which launched last week, is a Web site for college-bound teenagers whose profiles get automatically matched with 2,000 plus accredited four-year universities and colleges and 350 scholarship foundations.
“This isn’t a social place where people come to chat,” said Donna “DMA” Anderson, founder and chief executive of Clic Network based in Sherman Oaks. (DMA are her initials.) “They’re not socializing, they’re goal achieving.”
When students sign up on the free site and fill out extensive profiles on demographic, academic and extracurricular information with details down to their AP credits and what position they play on the football team a patent-pending system powered by 100 databases begins matching students with relevant colleges and scholarships.
Each student gets a home page with a customized calendar featuring upcoming college fairs, application and scholarship deadlines and test dates.
Universities and scholarship foundations can set up their own pages on the site for outreach purposes.
“Right now, the No. 1 method of reaching students for universities is by e-mail, catalogs and getting on planes,” Anderson said. “We can bring advanced technology to this process.”
While the site will be ad-driven, Anderson said monetizing the content isn’t her first priority. She wanted to address what she calls “abhorrent” statistics in this country: Only 19 out of 100 high school freshmen in California graduate from college, while 15 percent of U.S. four-year colleges do not fill their freshmen class.
TheClic.net attempts to broaden the knowledge base of prospective college applicants.
“It’s not a competitive mosh pit that kids think they have to jump into every year,” Anderson said. “There are kids in the city who think the only choice they have is between UC Irvine or USC and have no idea whether they would be a good fit for the Seven Sisters schools or Oberlin College.”
Geek to Chic
Students and professors at Caltech are widely respected for their research and expertise in technological advancements, but less so for their fashion sense.
So last week, the college staged a fashion show, sponsored by Yahoo Inc., to help students look smart at job interviews and at work.
“The standard attire here is very wrinkled T-shirts and jeans,” said Yvonne Banzali, career counselor at the Pasadena campus, who organized the event with another counselor, Jonie Tsugi.
Fitting professionals from JC Penney’s Arcadia store dressed 19 student models and two professors on the runway, while Sephora and Avon did makeup and hair.
The event was designed for students who walk into mock interviews at the Caltech career center in a suit, white socks and tennis shoes, Tsugi said.
Staff reporter Booyeon Lee can be reached at (323) 549-5225, ext. 230, or at
[email protected]
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