In the brave new world of digital media, a giant corporation like Walt Disney Co. turns to a 23-person advertising agency to create original content.
Encino-based AvatarLabs recently worked on creating 3-D animated objects for an online game based on the movie “Wall-E.” The interactive game was used as a branding campaign for the film.
“It’s definitely a trend,” said Rex Cook, founder and president of AvatarLabs. “Ad agencies are increasingly working with studios and TV networks to create original content that expands the brand.”
The days when AvatarLabs’ role was limited to creating pop-up ads for clients are long gone. The company has a team of code writers and content creators who produce ads in the form of online games, as well as “widgets” that can be picked up and dropped into any social networking pages or blogs, or sent to an iPhone.
Branded viral videos on sites like YouTube are also a popular work order.
For example, AvatarLabs hired a couple of actors to dress up as Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and a crew filmed reactions from shoppers as the ninjas walked into a Silver Lake supermarket. The 30-second clip was used to market the Warner Bros. movie “TMNT.”
The seven-year-old company’s first client was Universal Pictures. Cook had previously run a motion graphics company, Colony Design, that created title sequences for feature films.
AvatarLabs has recently signed contracts to do marketing campaigns for Sony Computer Entertainment America, Lexus, Yahoo, DirecTV, the National Football League and Major League Baseball.
The company is bootstrapped and brought in $4.5 million in revenue last year.
Seek and Find
New search site Scour is trying to launch a coup against algorithm-based search engines such as Google and Yahoo.
It’s a search engine that allows users to downgrade results that aren’t relevant. People using the site rank the relevancy of items revealed by a search and win points if they vote. Users can then cash in those points for a Visa gift card.
“Search engine optimization companies get paid millions of dollars to game search engine algorithms. Our search engine is designed to have humans move the nonrelevant results down,” said Dan Yomtobian, founder of the Sherman Oaks company.
He didn’t built the engine; Scour’s search results are an aggregation of those culled real-time from Google, Yahoo and MSN search engines.
Scour was launched last month and already has about 60,000 registered users. It’s the second venture for parent company Internext Media Corp. Its first business, ABCSearch, is a well-established sponsored-search site. The parent company has a total of 40 employees.
Before starting Internext, Yomtobian co-founded Findology Interactive Media, a search engine online ad shop. It was acquired by Australian marketing giant Photon Group last year.
Not Just Cows
Fairplex, which operates the L.A. County Fair, is not your typical non-profit at least not like those that run out of dusty offices stacked high with manila folders. It’s a high-tech operation. Most recently, Fairplex began using management software that allows people to plan projects and conduct annual reviews through a paperless, Web-based application developed by a company called SuccessFactors.
“We’re a non-profit organization, but we try to run it like a for-profit company,” said Raymond Ortegaso, corporate development director of Fairplex. “This type of technology helps us streamline our operations much more efficiently than the paper-based traditional way of doing business.”
The technology works like this: A vice president of sales may have a goal of increasing revenue by 25 percent. On the Web-based program, he can click on his regional manager’s name to ask him to contribute to the target growth. Also, instead of keeping a record of annual reviews in a manila folder, the software allows employees set goals and show how those objectives are met on an internal Web site.
Pomona-based Fairplex brought in $80 million in revenue last year, half of which came from sales at the county fair. That event draws 1.4 million people annually and is the largest such fair in the country. The other half of the revenue comes from 500 other events the organization puts on, including the L.A. Boat Show and a tattoo expo.
Sensor Funds
H2Scan, which develops sensor systems, has raised $4 million in venture funding.
The fourth round of funding was led by Chrysalix Energy Venture Capital, H5 Capital LP, Tri-Strip Associates LLC, TGB Partners and Ravinia Venture Fund. It brings the company’s total amount of outside money to $6.3 million.
The fresh injection of cash will be used to upgrade the company’s production facility, purchase additional equipment and bolster its marketing efforts, according to a news release.
H2Scan’s monitoring system detects leaks and other malfunctions for a variety of control systems, such as alarm systems.
Staff reporter Booyeon Lee can be reached at
[email protected]
or at (323) 549-5225, ext. 230.
