New media technology continues to be a hot spot in an otherwise slumping advertising and marketing economy, according to several firms on the Business Journal’s directory of Orange County multimedia companies.
CD-ROM business cards, DVD presentations and e-mailable commercials are among the marketing innovations fueling business at the firms.
“We’ve seen a lot of movement toward those tools, which are cost-effective,” said Cathy Haney, managing director at E-marcom Inc. in Santa Ana. “As long as the response rate is there, we’re seeing a lot of marketing being done in different arenas.”
Still, the heyday of new business driven by the dot-com hype and Internet-related companies has become a distant memory.
“We don’t get as many people picking up the phone and walking in the door like they used to,” Haney said.
Added David Otta, president and owner of David Otta Productions, Santa Ana: “There’s not a lot of growth going on in the county, and it’s kind of sad. It’s been kind of a tough year.”
Overall, however, the 55 companies on the Business Journal directory say they are holding steady and their numbers reflect that.
Firms reporting their head counts had a total of 442 employees, a 5% increase from last year (although this is an unreliable comparison, as some companies declined to disclose employee figures).
The majority of companies,23 out of 55,reported no growth in employee counts, while 15 showed increases and 13 showed dips of one to nine staff people.
“The frivolity of the earlier years is essentially gone. It’s pretty much all meat-and-potatoes marketing now,” said Dean Tanji, president of Abracadabra Presentation Graphics Inc., Santa Ana. His company went from nine employees to eight in the past year.
Tanji, whose company produces corporate meetings, said he hasn’t seen many high-energy sales meetings or new product introductions.
“We’ve seen things get more serious,” Tanji said, adding that the attitude is more, “let’s get down and sell what we know and do what we know.”
The multimedia production directory includes an eclectic mix of businesses of various sizes that offer a variety of services and products, such as training, CD-ROM development, TV commercials, production and post-production services, feature films, infomercials, Web site work, presentations at sales and stockholder meetings and DVD development,the latest craze.
“It’s been coming down in price,” Otta said of the DVD products. “And people are starting to have more DVD decks in businesses and homes to utilize.”
Rich Crafton, vice president of marketing at Duplication Masters, Santa Ana, specializing in CD-ROMs, said CDR development, which lets customers put information onto CDs, is also big.
Duplication Masters, which does work for Epicor Software Corp., Wonderware Corp. and Sage Software Inc., all of Irvine, has seen some other changes, partially driven by tight times.
Crafton said instead of doing 10,000-piece runs, a lot of companies are doing smaller printings of their software.
“If there are changes they don’t get stuck with a huge amount of stock,” Crafton said. “It makes it more manageable.”
There are, however, a few clients that continue to do big runs, according to Crafton, such as Primedia Inc., which recently had Duplication Masters run 170,000 music CDs.
Many of companies in the Business Journal directory say they’re working to develop their studios so they can match customer demand and stay ahead of the technology curve.
Many have their hands in new projects, such as Wild West Media in Irvine, which grew its employee count by 45% this year, to 11 people. The shop offers Internet, CD-ROM, DVD and full Webcasting and satellite services, which are used by Fox News and ABC, to name two clients.
Mark Braunstein, Wild West Media creative director and partner, said clients are asking his company to integrate media, such as combine CD-ROMs and DVDs with the Web, and link e-mail with databases.
“We’ve identified some new niches and, being a smaller boutique-type company, we’re able to adapt quickly to the marketplace,” Braunstein said.
Plus, Braunstein said, Wild West is promoting new retail marketing tools, such as a mini CD-ROM business card that’s used in lieu of hang tags on apparel. n
