This could have been a tough year for The Brand Amp.
Several of the Newport Beach-based public relations company’s mainstay clients have traded hands recently, including Cypress-based Mitsubishi Motors North America, whose parent sold a controlling stake to Nissan Motor Co. Ltd. in May; Tustin-based smartphone battery case maker Mophie Inc., which was bought by rival Zagg Inc. in February; and DirecTV in El Segundo, which went to AT&T last summer for $49 billion.
The firm also is the PR agency of record for Irvine-based Vizio Inc., which was acquired last month for $2 billion by LeEco in China. Another client, the TaylorMade golf brand in Carlsbad, has been put on the block by Germany-based Adidas AG.
The Brand Amp, so far, has kept the accounts and then some. Its revenue is up 17% year-over-year, while its staff has grown 20% to 41—good for the top spot on the Business Journal’s list of the biggest public relations firms based in Orange County. (See related story, page 6; list starts on page 10).
“We don’t bean count,” said Marc Altieri, who co-founded the firm with Todd Brooks and Charley Fitzwilliam.
“We really have built our success on [being] willing to over-service, because we know that’s going to keep our clients coming back, and it’s going to get us referrals to other clients.”
Karma
The agency last year replaced the now-defunct Trivalle Communications LLC in Santa Ana on the Mitsubishi account. The automaker has granted the firm clearance to do project work for Karma Automotive LLC, which is getting ready for a big move to new digs in Irvine (see related story, page 1).
The Brand Amp was “introduced to Karma by a friend in the industry that serves as a connector between brands and agencies,” according to Altieri, and is heading its public relations and social media efforts for the launch of its new luxury electric vehicle, Revero. It plans to hold an “exclusive launch party for owners and a handful of select media” on Sept. 8 at Seven-Degrees in Laguna Beach. The event will include “a technical walk-around and deeper dive of the vehicle” with Karma’s engineering team and executives. It also plans to hold a “ride-and-drive opportunity” in late October for media.
Karma Automotive, owned by China-based Wanxiang Group Corp., hired GoConvergence in Orlando to create video and other content for the automaker’s website. GoConvergence is part of Mood Media Corp. in Austin, and has an office in Newport Beach.
Old Is New
The Brand Amp’s work for Mophie, meanwhile, has translated into an even bigger assignment for the case maker’s new Midvale, Utah-based parent. The agency staged a social media event at last year’s South by Southwest, for example, where a “rescue team” dispatched St. Bernard dogs carrying Mophie Power Reserve chargers to festival attendees, who sent tweets using the #mophieRescue hashtag with a screenshot of their depleting phone batteries.
Zagg, which has a market value of about $200 million, was “impressed with what we’ve done for Mophie and decided to bring us on board for PR and social media,” Fitzwilliam said. “[It’s] definitely one of our larger clients at this point because we maintained the Mophie business and have expanded across Zagg.”
The firm hopes similar sparks will fly with AT&T, a communications giant that recently “took the wheel and began to actively run the DirecTV business.”
“Heading into this year, all bets were off,” said Altieri, who has worked with DirecTV for the past 17 years, first as the brand’s in-house senior manager of public relations, then as vice president of marketing communications at Leader Enterprises, a public relations agency that had an office in Seal Beach. The relationship continued when Altieri and his partners split from Roswell, Ga.-based Leader in January 2013 to form The Brand Amp.
“We didn’t know what was going to happen, but this year has been huge for us because we’ve been able to completely endear ourselves and win the confidence of lead PR people at AT&T corporate out of Dallas, as well as folks they have based in New York,” he said. “We get pulled in and do a lot of brainstorms around AT&T-related properties. … I know that they are really happy with what we are doing, and we are very hopeful that at some point we’ll get some balls thrown at us from AT&T specifically.”
The agency has retained duties promoting “sports-related services” for the telecom’s newly acquired DirecTV unit.
It also developed and launched the Audience Sports sub-brand—a concept similar to NBC Sports or HBO Sports.
“We’ve … been brought in to help boost and amplify the original programming” on the Audience channel, Altieri said.
There’s no news with the Vizio account, which may be good news at this point.
“We experienced no changes in the dynamics and the nature of our relationship with Vizio thus far, so it’s business as usual for us right now,” he said.
New Work
The agency also picked up two new clients this year—audio equipment maker DTS Inc. in Calabasas and University of California-Irvine Athletics.
It helped UCI with its “strategy to bring [the Los Angeles Rams] to [training camp at the university], amplify the messaging, and make sure UCI stays part of that message,” Altieri said.
The firm also plans to tabulate and communicate the economic and public relations benefits of having the Rams training camp at UCI, including brand exposure, local vendor involvement and visitors from outside OC, Fitzwilliam said.
DTS, which has a market value of about $575 million, is looking for exposure outside its core audiences—the audio, video and entertainment media. It wants to reach out to general consumers and let them know their phone or PC might have a DTS feature.
“So DTS is not just the [logo] you see on the screen at the movies … it’s making things you use sound better,” Altieri said.
