Unit Opens With Five New E-Business Clients.
By SANDRA GARCIA
In last week’s New York magazine cover story entitled "The E Decade," its introduction read: "E is for electronic, for equity, for entrepreneur, and even for erotica. But most of all, E is for the greatest economic boom the world has ever seen."
Indeed, in just a few short years, we have seen the massive growth of the Internet and the opportunities it has created for everyone—the commercial industry being no exception. Beginning late last year, the proliferation of e-commerce sites pouring gobs of IPO money into its advertising opened up a whole new world of clients for advertising agencies and production companies. As agencies and production houses both continue to profit from the new business, New York-based Artustry Partnership has positioned itself to enjoy the best of both worlds.
In early ’99, commercial director Bob Giraldi, his partner Phil Suarez (co-owners of bicoastal Giraldi Suarez Productions), and David Sklaver, former president of now defunct agency Wells Rich Greene BDDP, founded the Artustry Partnership (the company also opened with bicoastal Voyeur Films executive producer Bill Perna, who has since moved on to bicoastal M-80). It was formed as both an advertising agency and production company, but was to operate on the latter’s formula. By design the company offered its clients soup to nuts services, from product branding right through to producing a spot. To cut down on overhead, the work was outsourced to freelancers based on the project’s requirements.
After its success in working with such diverse clients as Chase Manhattan Bank, Texaco and Trump Properties, the same team that began Artustry has spun off a satellite division called Artustry.net to handle all advertising for e-business startups and Internet companies. "We did it because of the opportunity. A lot of these dot-coms have wonderful ideas, but they don’t have senior marketing counsel," explained Sklaver, who will run the unit, but is an equal partner in the venture with Giraldi, Suarez and strategic planner Mark Abrams (who was formerly managing director of global marketing at Chase Manhattan Bank).
Perhaps the greater reason behind forming the division came after Sklaver and Giraldi scored five new e-business clients in one month. Those clients include StarChefs.com, a lifestyle site offering recipes from famous chefs (Giraldi was a founding member of the site, but now has a passive role); UrbanBaby.com, which provides information and sells products to urban parents with young children; Art-Ex.com, an online art gallery; e-Mattress.com, which sells bedding on the Web; and Smartfromthestart.com, a life-planning online resource described by Sklaver as "AARP for Generation X."
Like the Artustry Partnership, the Internet division will hire freelance talent and create customized teams based on a specific project. The Net unit aims to form relationships with Internet companies that are just getting their businesses off the ground, rather than targeting the e-business types that are already pouring millions of dollars into their advertising. "We felt that if we could get in on the ground floor, it would ultimately be beneficial to all parties—them and us," related Sklaver.
The business model is set up to provide creative and production services at cost, while taking its markup in equity. "We’ll defer our income, and hopefully there will be an upside where the company grows or goes public. So instead of investing in hard cash, we’re investing in services," said Sklaver, who added that any creatives it hired would be paid with hard currency.
Initially, Artustry.net will plan the startups’ marketing strategies, beginning with logo design and print, outdoor and Web advertising, with broadcast to follow. "There will be some TV work in a few cases, but in the beginning it will be more about positioning," explained Sklaver.
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