Digital agency Zehner Group has expanded. The Culver City firm more than doubled its local office space and opened an office in New York this month.
Founder Matthew Zehner credits the company’s growth to more work from clients such as Tennis.com in Brentwood and Farmers Insurance Group in Los Angeles, along with expanding its digital capabilities.
Zehner said he’s been fortunate to find talented employees and build
long-term relationships with clients.
“We’ve also been expanding our capabilities,” he said.
The New York office will help the agency attract business there and will be managed by Curtis Jewell II, a former technology consultant at Accenture.
Zehner founded the company in 2007 and ran it alone out of his house for the first four years. Now, staff size is 30.
The company has been in its current space since 2011 and just expanded to 5,500 square feet from its original 2,500-square-foot space. The expansion adds additional conference rooms and meeting space.
Zehner said he hadn’t planned for the expansion and the opening of the New York office to come at the same time.
“It’s definitely been some quick growth,” he said. “But it’s been our target to grow quickly as well.”
Are You Experienced?
Experiential marketing will play a larger role at Hollywood’s Allied Integrated Marketing.
The firm acquired Grand Central Marketing Inc., a New York experiential marketing firm, this month and will create a division called Allied Experiential.
The new division increases Allied Integrated’s ability to offer promotional programs such as publicity stunts, events and street teams, said President Clint Kendall.
“We wanted to make it a bigger part of our company to do larger-scale, bigger events,” Kendall said. “We’ve been doing smaller events around the country as an extension of our publicity and promotions business but the acquisition of Grand Central really takes us to another level of what we’re able to do.”
Allied Experiential will absorb Grand Central’s employees and handle its clients, which include HBO Inc. and JetBlue Airways Corp., both in New York.
Matthew Glass, co-founder and chief executive of Grand Central, and Jennifer Granozio, co-founder and chief operating officer, will become senior vice presidents at Allied Integrated and head the new division.
Allied Experiential offices, which will be in Hollywood and New York, will be supported by Allied Integrated’s 21 field offices in the United States and Canada.
Kendall declined to state the financial terms of the acquisition.
He said the new division will help the company to boost use of digital technology in future client campaigns.
“Now, you have more tools to generate buzz,” he said. “If an event is buzzworthy, you can leverage it more. Companies are relying on experiential as a way to break through the clutter in a fragmented media market where you can’t just get everything done with running commercials and a traditional ad model.”
Agencies & Accounts
I Mean It Creative and Iconisus L&Y, both Culver City advertising agencies owned by Emrah Yucel, will represent the global Turkish Culture and Tourism account. The two agencies will be responsible for creating global ad campaigns with an emphasis on social media. … Ad tech company OpenX in Pasadena has added four executives to its mobile advertising team. Rob Kramer has been hired as general manager of mobile, Jin Yu as vice president of engineering and chief architect, Laura Buchman as vice president of publisher solutions and Martin Price as senior director of product. … Finn Partners Inc., a PR firm based in New York, has hired Hope Boonshaft as senior partner at its Rogers/Finn Partners office in Los Angeles. Boonshaft was the executive vice president of worldwide external affairs for Sony Pictures Entertainment. … RPA, an ad agency in Santa Monica, has named Christian Cocker senior vice president and group strategic planning director for its Honda account. Cocker was senior vice president and group planning director at Deutsch LA. … West L.A. ad agency Sagon-Phior will represent the Nonhuman Rights Project, a Coral Springs, Fla., organization promoting legal rights for animals. The agency will handle branding, social media and public relations for the organization.
Staff reporter Subrina Hudson can be reached at [email protected] or (323) 549-522, ext. 251.
