Digital Co. Extends Broadcast, Broadband Assets.
By SARAH WOODWARD
Publicly traded, New York-headquartered Razorfish, a global digital communications company, has acquired entertainment brand specialist Lee Hunt Associates (LHA), New York, and Internet strategy and product design firm TSDesign, Boston. The combined purchase was valued at $49 million. Parties involved declined to specify how the deal breaks down monetarily. LHA is a larger firm and brings 45 employees into the Razorfish realm, while TSDesign has 17 employees.
"With these strategic acquisitions, Razorfish deepens its talent pool and its comprehensive service offerings, allowing us to help companies invent or reinvent their businesses across industry sectors, geographic borders and technologies," said Razorfish president and CEO Jeff Dachis. "Lee Hunt and his team top the list of digital consultants to the entertainment industry, and [TSDesign CEO] Terry Swack’s ‘user experience audit’ and her firm’s pioneering work have helped define the industry standard."
Under the terms of the acquisitions, Hunt continues at LHA/ Razorfish while becoming head of Razorfish New York’s broadband solutions group. He will coordinate broadband solutions with Razorfish’s West Coast and European offices. And as TSDesign becomes part of the Razorfish family, Swack has been named Razorfish’s VP of experience design.
"I’ve been in the [entertainment] business for twenty years, and the changes that have been occurring are monumental," said Hunt. "Razorfish is so deeply involved in new media, and it just seemed like a really good fit. Their corporate culture was really similar [to ours], and they have tremendous respect for the kind of work that we do." He added that the link with Razorfish "really positions us for the dynamic changes that are happening in the industry, and allows us to continue to be an industry leader."
"Razorfish and TSDesign have both moved beyond the Web and e-commerce to new platforms and devices, using a fundamental understanding of people to create compelling stories and experiences," said Swack. "Great experience design happens only by having human-centered analysis, strategy and creation process from start to finish—something both Razorfish and TSDesign understand."
The acquisitions mark the third and fourth such takeovers in roughly five months. In July, Razorfish bought Santa Monica-based broadcast design firm Fuel and its commercial production arm from founder Seth Epstein for an estimated $25 million to $35 million (SHOOT, 7/30/99, p. 1). Then in August, in a deal valued at $677 million, Razorfish merged with publicly-traded computer-system advisor and designer International Integration (I-Cube), based in Cambridge, Mass. According to Epstein, however, Razorfish will "not necessarily" continue to grow at this rate. "It’s not like Razorfish just goes around buying companies," he said. "The choices they make are for really particular, long-term strategic reasons. [These are] companies that for whatever combination of reasons—culture, quality of work, size, growth patterns—complement where Razorfish is going in the next three years."
Formed in ’90, LHA is known for launching, positioning, designing and promoting media brands and TV networks. It is the agency of record for PBS, and the primary agency for FOX Kids Latin America. Most recently, LHA unveiled a month-long on-air promotion for FOX Kids Latin America that signals the coming millennium. For Quokka Sports, LHA conceived brand strategy prior to the Web site’s launch, and also served as the ad agency for the first Quokka campaign. That effort, "Digital Dose of Sports," consisted of three ads—"Serious Conversation," "Symptoms" and "Inquisitive People"—which spoof the pharmaceutical ad genre. They were directed by David Shane of bicoastal/international Hungry Man (SHOOT, 8/27/99, p. 23).
Last year, LHA created NBC’s fall redesign; executed Lifetime’s fall campaign; and launched Lifetime’s first digital network, LMN, as well as Disney’s animation channel, Toon Disney. LHA offers a wide range of services, from corporate image presentations to print services. Said Hunt, "We do a lot of strategy work for media brands, and then do the creative [that follows], whether it’s broadcast design, print design, spot work, new media, or any other way that branding is going to be expressed in electronic media." Additional clients include MSNBC, Court TV and XM Satellite Radio.
Epstein said of LHA: "There isn’t any other company out there that I would rather have this merger happen with. It’s an amazing company and an incredible complement." He also said the merger strengthens Razorfish’s broadcast division by making the operation fully bicoastal.
TSDesign was founded as a graphic design firm in ’85. A decade later, Swack redefined the company as an Internet strategy and product design firm. Three years ago, Swack pioneered the "user experience audit," a system for evaluating client Web sites based on whether they are meeting business, strategy and branding objectives. Specializing in "the creation of human-centered e-business, products and services," the company’s clients include 3M, Compaq, BankBoston, WebCriteria, Dell, Tripod, PlanetAll and Cendant Mortgage.
Tim Burton Discusses His Dread Of AI As An Exhibition of His Work Opens In London
The imagination of Tim Burton has produced ghosts and ghouls, Martians, monsters and misfits — all on display at an exhibition that is opening in London just in time for Halloween.
But you know what really scares him? Artificial intelligence.
Burton said Wednesday that seeing a website that had used AI to blend his drawings with Disney characters "really disturbed me."
"It wasn't an intellectual thought — it was just an internal, visceral feeling," Burton told reporters during a preview of "The World of Tim Burton" exhibition at London's Design Museum. "I looked at those things and I thought, 'Some of these are pretty good.' … (But) it gave me a weird sort of scary feeling inside."
Burton said he thinks AI is unstoppable, because "once you can do it, people will do it." But he scoffed when asked if he'd use the technology in this work.
"To take over the world?" he laughed.
The exhibition reveals Burton to be an analogue artist, who started off as a child in the 1960s experimenting with paints and colored pencils in his suburban Californian home.
"I wasn't, early on, a very verbal person," Burton said. "Drawing was a way of expressing myself."
Decades later, after films including "Edward Scissorhands," "Batman," "The Nightmare Before Christmas" and "Beetlejuice," his ideas still begin with drawing. The exhibition includes 600 items from movie studio collections and Burton's personal archive, and traces those ideas as they advance from sketches through collaboration with set, production and costume designers on the way to the big screen.
London is the exhibition's final stop on a decade-long tour of 14 cities in 11 countries. It has been reconfigured and expanded with 90 new objects for its run in... Read More