Creative Economy : Innovation + Job News

'Tis the season for "prize philanthropy."

StoneArch Creative, a Minneapolis company that specializes in health and medical marketing, is giving away $1,000 a day this week to the causes that generate the most tweets for its campaign.

Anyone can vote for a non-profit by posting a public message to Twitter that includes the tag #MyTweetWish. At the end of each day StoneArch will tally a winner.

"My hope would be that we get a nice response from across the country or globally versus just locally," says Jessica Boden, StoneArch's executive creative director.

Boden says StoneArch is celebrating "a great year." Its focus on health and medical marketing has made the 26-year-old agency less vulnerable to economic ups and downs.

Health and medical companies make up 95 percent of StoneArch's clients. The agency bolsters that specialty by hiring employees who come from both the medical and creative worlds, Boden says. That's key to understanding  the technical aspects of products they support.

"It's just a much different dialogue than talking to someone who's buying shoes," says Boden.

Until a few years ago, the company's clients were almost entirely based in the Twin Cities, but in 2010 StoneArch continued to gain traction nationally, says Boden. Highlights included winning work as the agency for Abbott Vascular's drug-eluding stent business.

Source: Jessica Boden, StoneArch Creative
Writer: Dan Haugen

A St. Cloud software marketer is trying on a new avatar: mobile video game publisher.

W3i was founded ten years ago in a dorm room at St. Cloud State by three brothers, Rob, Ryan and Aaron Weber. Their mission: to be a leader in the distribution of consumer applications.

At the time, that meant Windows desktop software -- a lot of clip art, wallpaper and screensavers. Windows is still a good business, but they now see mobile gaming as the best bet for future growth.

Last summer, the company made headlines for a new service called Apperang, which pays mobile users 25 cents every time they install an app by one of W3i's clients.

Last week, the company announced the launch of a new subsidiary, Recharge Studios, which is seeking to invest at least $1 million in mobile gaming in the next three to six months.

The market for mobile video games is anticipated to grow somewhere between $4.5 billion and $10 billion over the next few years.

"We think there are going to be a lot of developers who are going to try to go after that market, and we believe we can help them," says Rob Weber, W3i's vice president of business development.

In most cases, Recharge will look to help finance, develop and market new mobile gaming apps in exchange for a share of revenue. In some cases it may seek to acquire full ownership.

The studio already has a handful of games under production and plans to release its first title by the end of the month, followed by a few more in the first quarter of 2011.

Source: Rob Weber, W3i
Writer: Dan Haugen

Give, and you shall receive. That's a lesson learned for Minneapolis branding and design consultancy Imagehaus.

Creative Director Jay Miller started a giving program when he founded the company in 2000. Last month, the firm calculated that it's provided more than $2 million worth of services to nonprofits.

When Imagehaus saw its big-box retailer work shrink in recent years, it was able to fall back on some of those same nonprofits when they returned as paying customers, says Miller.

Twin Cities nonprofits are invited to apply for a grant on Imagehaus' website. The company chooses about one per quarter. Alumni can later get additional services at cost.

The four-person firm recently purchased an 1,800-square-foot commercial condo in the SOHO Lofts building and will be moving there from the other side of downtown early next spring.

As a branding firm, Imagehaus helps retailers come up with names, logos, and store concepts. Besides its nonprofit work, Miller says they benefit from having a mix of large and small clients.

"Our business model has always been very diversified," says Miller.

That's helped them in terms of stability, but also in a creative sense. They're able to take what they learn from working with big-box retailers and apply it to mom-and-pop stores, and vice versa.

"We learn from both--different things," says Miller. "When you have your smaller companies and smaller budgets, it challenges you to be creative in different ways."

Miller says he expects owning instead of renting will reduce the company's overhead and hopefully help it add employees in 2011.

Source: Jay Miller, Imagehaus
Writer: Dan Haugen

A trio of experienced Twin Cities software developers want to take their startup sensibilities and apply them to projects and products for more established companies.

Dan Grigsby, Tom Brice, and Pete Schwamb this week announced the launch of Drivetrain, an app development agency for mobile, web, and social networks.

Grigsby, who has successfully launched companies in the Twin Cities and Silicon Valley, says startups fundamentally need to be nimble and efficient with software projects. "Startups have to launch quickly, have things in the marketplace, and can't afford to get lost in the minutia and constantly push out launch dates," he says.

Drivetrain will aim to apply that same pace beyond the startup world. The Twin Cities is rich with large companies, many of which have a growing need for new software. Grigsby sees strong demand for marketing and branding apps, as well as business automation apps for managing in-house functions such as production and inventory.

Grigsby previously founded Mobile Orchard, a one-man mobile app development shop. His challenges with that company included scaling, as well as switching gears between selling and coding. He hopes a three-person company will alleviate those issues.

Grigsby, Brice and Schwamb will host a Drivetrain launch party 5:30pm Thursday, Dec. 2, at Pizza Luce in downtown Minneapolis. The new company was also preparing to announce the beta launch of one of its first projects, for local custom stationery shop RedStamp.com.

Source: Dan Grigsby, Drivetrain
Writer: Dan Haugen

"We usually just say we're an interactive entertainment company," says Shad Petosky.

He and his team of creative minds at Puny Entertainment in Northeast Minneapolis have had their heads down of late, cranking out everything from cartoon and Flash game animations to restaurant and TV-show concepts.

The company's official capabilities list reads like this: Interactive Programming, Design, Animation, Illustration, Concept/Scripting. And Petosky says Puny is expanding those capabilities, too, branching out into social media work and digital media purchasing.

Petosky co-founded the company in 2007. It's biggest success has been winning animation and web design work for the Nick Jr. show Yo Gabba Gabba! Other clients include the Cartoon Network, Disney Channel, General Mills, and The New Yorker.

The Yo Gabba Gabba! work typifies Puny's aesthetic. The show is aimed at preschool kids, but it appeals to hip adults, too, with cameos by indie musicians and actors. "We like to do stuff that works on two levels, where it works for kids and adults," says Petosky, citing The Rocky & Bullwinkle Show as inspiration.

Another common thread that ties the company's varied, multi-media work together: Petosky says "clients tend to want something that's more playful, fun, humorous. I guess it's mostly light-hearted, but with a classic, strong design sense."

That fun, playful vibe often translates well into social media, he says, which is why Puny is preparing to add new services related to social media.

After a quick growth spurt out of the gate in 2007, Petosky says the company is being more deliberate these days. With 20 employees, they're being more selective about clients and jobs and looking to avoid growing faster than they can integrate new employees.

And a new development: One of Puny's partners has acquired a 25 percent stake in the company. Petosky wasn't yet ready to announce details, but said the investment and the expertise it comes with should help Puny Entertainment manage growth.

Source: Shad Petosky, Puny Entertainment
Writer: Dan Haugen

As the nation recovers from a recession, it's still a depression for teenage job-seekers. The unemployment rate for teenagers was a staggering 27.1 percent last month, nearly three times the overall rate.

The recession appears to have been particularly damaging to teenagers' employment prospects, as laid-off adults trade down to jobs traditionally held by students. A new Minneapolis web startup is aiming to help put some cash in kids' pockets by connecting them with odd jobs around their neighborhood.

Rock Your Block is the brainchild of Sarah Young, who took the idea to last month's Startup Weekend event in Minneapolis, which we covered in a video. The web app will be a place where kids can search for work and advertise their services for things like raking, shoveling or babysitting.

"I wanted to provide a quick, easy, simple way for teens to find odd jobs within their neighborhoods" and avoid the hassle of putting up fliers or knocking on strangers' doors, says Young, whose income as a kid included pay for things like babysitting and dog walking. There is no Monster.com for these kind of chores, and that's what Rock Your Block wants to be.

Young and her team are in the process of working out safety and security issues. Before a child can set up an account, they need to get an adult to vouch for them and pay a sponsorship fee and for an optional background check. When they complete a job, customers can post feedback about their work, which will appear on the teenager's job history.

The company is self-funded for now. They hope to roll out a test version of the site this year with a wider beta launch in 2011.

Source: Sarah Young, Rock Your Block
Writer: Dan Haugen

Could the clothing we wear someday help us monitor our heart rate, track our performance, or even recover from injuries?

That's the future Lucy Dunne is exploring as an assistant professor in the University of Minnesota's apparel design program

Dunne studies wearable technologies, sometimes referred to as "smart clothing." The term describes to clothing or accessories that incorporate come sort of electronic component.

It's an emerging field with a lot of interest but few products on the shelf so far. One example would be Nike shoes that can send information to an iPod or iPhone. Then there are tackier, or should we say more novel, applications, like the mp3 player jacket or light-up T-shirts.

More serious applications, though, revolve around sports and medicine. One challenge with integrating body monitoring technology into clothing, says Dunne, is that in order to pick up a quality signal, such as a heartbeat, most sensors need to be tightly affixed to the body, often with a strap or a patch.

"I was originally a clothing designer, and in clothing design you can't ask the consumer to make those kinds of compromises, where they're uncomfortable or they feel like they look weird," says Dunne. "So my interest is in translating those sensing techniques into everyday clothing."

Dunne recently received a garment-tech innovation award for her work studying how signal quality is affected by looser fitting clothing (or "Joint Sensing in Everyday Clothing: Analysis of Garment Ease and Signal Noise in a Garment-Integrated Optical Bend Sensor.")

The hope is that her work will one day lead to everyday smart clothing that does more than light up or play music.

Source: Lucy Dunne, University of Minnesota
Writer: Dan Haugen

You may not have heard of Scales Advertising, but if you buy office supplies from 3M, odds are you've seen their work.

The under-the-radar St. Paul agency does design, packaging and advertising for a variety of 3M products. Other clients include Scotch, C.H. Robinson Worldwide and the Minnesota High Tech Association.

Scales recently announced the hiring of a new associate creative director, Peter Winecke, and also a new client, Red Wing-based Capital Safety.

The nearly 40-year-old company touts a focus on "becoming part of our clients' daily operation, knowledge base and potential."

"We're going after business from a more integrated standpoint versus just a project-by-project basis," says marketing director Holli Maines.

And it appears to be working. The company's revenue was around $6.5 million last year, and they expect to improve on that by between $500,000 and $1 million this year.

Maines says what helps set the agency apart is its range of in-house services, which include strategic planning as well as packaging design and production, photography and international file preparation.

Source: Holli Maines, Scales Advertising
Writer: Dan Haugen

Stacy Becker knows there's already a million online dating sites.

But she also knows too many people--herself included--who are disappointed, disillusioned, and uninterested in them all.

So she banded together with a few like-minded singles to create Plume Blue, a local dating site that attempts to offer something different.

"We're really trying to rethink how online dating is done," says Becker, the site's founder and CEO.

The result: a site that's centered around events and things to do instead of personality profiles. Users post their ideas or plans for a night out (Say, Walker Art Center on Thursday night), and other users can respond and make plans to join if the plans fit their idea of a good time too.

Becker says too many online dating services lead to meetups that begin with an awkward coffee shop "interview" instead of having fun.

The site, which launched Oct. 26, is a side project for Becker, who also works as a public policy consultant. She developed some web experience while working on a social networking project for the Citizens League.

Her first goal is getting usership up to a critical mass. The first 250 people to sign-up receive a free lifetime membership. After that, Becker plans to charge $12 for the first two months and $7 per month after that.

Source: Stacy Becker, Plume Blue.
Writer: Dan Haugen

Luis Fitch makes sure marketers' messages don't get lost in translation.

Fitch founded the UNO Hispanic branding agency in Minneapolis in 1999. A gallery exhibit opening Thursday at Metropolitan State University will celebrate a decade of his work.

The Mexican-born creative director previously worked for agencies including Fame, a division of Martin Williams, and John Ryan Group, which specializes in branding for banking.

Fitch started UNO after seeing U.S. Census figures that confirmed what he already knew: that the U.S. Hispanic population was surging in terms of size and purchasing power.

UNO does some work in Mexico and Latin America, but its focus is on the U.S. Hispanic market, which is incredibly diverse, as Fitch recently explained to a new client:

"They wanted to go after the Latino market, and we said, well, which Latino market?"

UNO uses a method called Filtros (or "filters") to better define who a client is seeking to target. The branding strategy will vary depending on things such as language, religion, and country of origin.

Much of the agency's work involves in-store retail displays or package design. It also helps local advertising agencies adapt their campaigns for Hispanic audiences.

The company has five employees, along with a circle of freelancers. Clients include local Fortune 500 companies such as Target, General Mills, and Nash Finch.

"Ten Years of Hispanic Posters by Luis Fitch of UNO Branding" opens with a reception 4-7pm, Oct. 14, at the Gordon Parks Gallery (645 E. 7th St., St. Paul).

Source: Luis Fitch, UNO Ltd.
Writer: Dan Haugen

A recent campaign by Preston Kelly encouraged people to lose weight and get rid of their "fatpants." Meanwhile, the Minneapolis ad agency is loosening its own belt.

The sixty-year-old agency has added seven new people this year, bringing its team to a total of 45 people.

Chuck Kelly, president and principal, says the agency has seen growth from both existing and new clients. Last year, for example, it added Grand Casino to its client list, which also includes HealthPartners, the Mall of America, and the Minnesota Zoo.

What's working? Kelly says customers are coming to them for "iconic ideas."

"What we say is an iconic idea is an idea that motivates people and inspires them to take the desired action," says Kelly. "I think our insights lead to iconic ideas, and iconic ideas lead to results."

Preston Kelly was named Advertising Age's 2010 Midwest Small Agency of the Year in July. Last week, it won a 2010 Radio Mercury Award for a campaign it did for the YMCA, which encouraged people to lose weight and then donate their old "fatpants" to charity.

"All of a sudden there is a double good," says Kelly.

Kelly says the agency is growing its content management and working on new digital strategies to balance  traditional advertising.

Source: Chuck Kelly, Preston Kelly
Writer: Dan Haugen

Online advertisers go to great lengths to gather information about web users. They glean terabytes of data from web searches, social media profiles, and other sources in an attempt to target certain advertisements to certain audiences.

The problem, according to entrepreneur Aaron Weber, is that a lot of this information is outdated, incomplete, and still dependent on guesswork. For example, are those baby clothes you ordered a gift, or are you a new parent?

Weber's solution: instead of forcing advertisers to cyberstalk and guess what consumers want, why not let consumers just tell advertisers what they're interested in?

Weber is co-founder of Inveni, an online "taste profile" that lets Internet users consolidate product ratings from various websites and choose to anonymously share them with advertisers. In exchange, users get help finding other products they may like and hopefully get more relevant advertising at sites they visit.

"The whole goal is to align the interests of advertisers and consumers," says Weber.

The service launched in beta last week. For now it only supports movies and television programs, but Weber says Inveni plans to expand to include books, music, video games, and perhaps other products and restaurants after that.

Inveni will be incorporating display advertising on its site in the coming weeks. Users who choose to share information with advertisers will also have their anonymous information stored in a web cookie so advertisers on other sites can match ads to their taste profiles.

Weber previously co-founded W3i, an online software marketing company that he and his co-founders grew from their dorm rooms in St. Cloud to a $30-million-a-year company.

Source: Aaron Weber, Inveni
Writer: Dan Haugen

If inefficient data storage is the corporate equivalent of searching for your lost car keys, Digitiliti provides valet service. The downtown-St. Paul�based company offers an integrated data management service that files, stores, secures, and backs up company data seamlessly and automatically--functions that are typically spread across half a dozen software platforms.

"The biggest problem is that for data, there's a point solution for every problem," he says. "If you want to store your data, you buy backup software. If you want disaster recovery, you take it offsite. If you want to be able to collaborate, you buy software for that. We've integrated it into one system."

For this nifty achievement, the company picked up a Tech Award Circle gold medal in July and a nomination for a Tekne Award from the Minnesota High Tech Association in September.

The company launched in 2005 with a data protection service, but quickly identified the need for a broader product, explains Ken Peters, executive vice president in sales and marketing. The company's DigiLIBE (Digital Library) product launched two years ago, and has fueled remarkable growth for the tech company right through the recession, doubling the company's workforce to about two dozen.

In growth, Digitiliti has maintained its flexibility. Headquarters are located in St. Paul's artsy Lowertown neighborhood, an environment that "fosters innovation," according to Peters. And rather than bulk up on staff, they've taken a nimble approach to growth: "We have built a flexible workforce, both internal and external," he says. "Our approach is, hire the best talent. It doesn't matter where they're located."

Source: Ken Peters, Digitiliti
Writer: Joe Hart

Some folks toss the fundraising pitch from their alma mater; others reach for their checkbooks. The St. Paul�based Reeher company aims to help colleges and universities determine which category you fit�before the direct mailers go out.

This task requires "predictive analytics" that crunch data collected about individuals to sort who is likely to donate, and why. "Traditionally, institutions would build that kind of system themselves, which is expensive and requires pretty specialized people," explains company founder Andy Reeher. "We can give them that functionality within a matter of weeks."

Reeher is further differentiated by the fact that its service is web-based, which eliminates any need for software installation and minimizes training.

Growth of the company has been rapid, fueled in part by lean budgets and diminishing funding sources at institutions of higher ed. A number of larger institutions, including Tulane and Johns Hopkins, have signed on for the service. Two weeks ago the company signed up McGill University, one of the oldest and largest institutions in Canada, and it just inked a deal with the University of Kentucky which Reeher says will be announced shortly.

"We're doing very well as a business right now," Reeher says. "With the economy in a tough situation, organizations are learning to use their resources more wisely." Reeher's service helps them do so--and save money while they're doing it.

Source, Andy Reeher, Reeher LLC
Writer: Joe Hart

A local mobile app developer's profile is rising like, well, a weather balloon.

Sevnthsin has doubled in size over the past two years to 14 employees today. The company's mobile site is on display this week as the Mobile Site of the Day for Wednesday, Sept. 22, on the Favorite Website Awards, a site where marketers and developers go for ideas and inspiration.

And last week it landed on the front page of the Pioneer Press for attaching a cooler full of cameras and mobile devices to a weather balloon and sending it into the upper atmosphere. "We are doing this out of curiosity, as a way to test the limits of mobile-phone technology," Sevnthsin owner Jamey Erickson told reporter Julio Ojeda-Zapata.

Sevnthsin was originally the name of Erickson's band, which never took off. But his web-building business did. During college he started doing web work for various local bands. As those contacts generated more work, he eventually started a full-time company in June 2006.

Erickson's company still does work for local musicians, including Doomtree and Rhymesayers Entertainment, but his clients now also include the likes of Target, Caribou Coffee, and Toyota.

"We basically help clients build a conversation with a twentysomething audience," says Erickson. It's a younger, tech-savvy audience that expects more two-way communication.

Sevnthsin has grown through the recession, and Erickson believes it's because the economy is encouraging companies to experiment with new technologies that cost less than mass media.

"People are trying to innovate and come up with new solutions as the world is rapidly changing around us"--from both a technological and an economic standpoint, says Erickson. "We see people willing to experiment with these new technologies, and experiment with them more seriously."

Sevnthsin plans to launch another weather balloon on Friday, Sept. 24.

Source: Jamey Erickson, Sevnthsin
Writer: Dan Haugen