Eiston Lo (University of British Columbia, BCom 2008) prepared this case under the supervision of Angela Kelleher (BCIT Instructor in Business Administration), with the close cooperation of Blast Radius and a generous grant from the British Columbia Innovation Council (BCIC). This case is intended as the basis for class discussion rather than to illustrate effective or ineffective handling of an administrative situation.

Copyright © 2008 by Angela Kelleher and BCIT. All rights reserved.

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BCIC Case Study Library No. 0011 December 2008

Blast Radius – (A) It was January 3rd 2001 and Gurval Caer, CEO and founder of Blast Radius, looked at his computer screen and realized it was 3:11am. He couldn’t sleep. His young company, based in Vancouver, Canada had been incredibly successful in its first few years of operation. It had grown from an idea to 195 employees in just three years, now offered a stock option plan to employees, and ranked fourth on Profit Magazine’s annual Top 50 Hottest Start-ups list. Blast Radius had a growing and profitable business offering on-line interactive marketing services such as websites and e-commerce applications – but Gurval had his eye on something bigger. In 1999, at the height of the dot-com growth era, he had made a bold decision to shift his interactive marketing company’s focus towards global brand companies rather than aggressively pursuing the booming dot-com companies like many of its competitors. In 1999 and 2000, Blast Radius had experienced some early successes with industry leaders such as Casio, LEGO, Nike, Universal Studios, Atlantic Records and MTV. These were great projects that led Gurval to realize that he wanted to continue to be at the table for the big global brand decisions. In particular, he had some ideas about how Blast Radius could add value to the global Nike and Nintendo marketing platforms. He wondered – what would it take for his small Canadian company to become a strategic marketing partner to some of the top companies in the world?

Background Blast Radius was founded in 1997 by graduates of the Vancouver Film School’s multimedia program… With its roots as a Boutique digital design and marketing agency specializing in creating highly interactive and immersive branded experiences for videogame companies, the company is now a leading interactive agency that designs, delivers and optimizes innovative, profitable customer experiences for leading global brands… A turning point for the company came in 1999 when it decided to take what it had learned about strategy, technology, design and the power of the internet and apply it to the business challenges facing leading consumer brands…

(Blast Radius Media Kit.)

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The Blossoming Internet Marketing Industry

The Internet, through burgeoning investments in its infrastructure and support systems, blossomed into a household word during the 1990’s. As the Internet’s use gained momentum with exponentially increasing websites and web pages, companies saw the Internet as a large, untapped market. The Internet was attractive especially in its ability to conduct commerce (known as e-commerce) and through its use as an advertising medium of low cost. From many people’s perspectives, the Internet is one of the fastest ways for companies to spread information to a vast number of people simultaneously.

In its beginning, many marketing companies helped their clients make this shift by building or promoting a website in addition to placing banner ads on another website. Many companies wanted their company to have some type of presence in this booming Internet phenomenon.

Overview of Internet Marketing

Internet marketing is relatively inexpensive when compared to traditional marketing’s ratio of cost and the reach of target audiences. For a small fraction of the traditional marketing costs, companies can target a specific audience with specific behaviour or interest, rather than broadly defined demographics. Traditional marketers typically segment their market based on demographics such as age, gender, geography, and other general factors, while Internet marketers can obtain more targeted knowledge of their targeted audiences through specific activities such as item search, participation in online communities, blogging, and posting photos etc.

In fact, such personalized marketing approaches facilitated the growth of many successful companies that focused on different areas: search engines such as Yahoo (founded in 1995) and Google (founded in 1998) generate ad revenues through users’ personalized search results; e-commerce sites such as Amazon.com (founded in 1994) sell products and services directly to users; online communities such as MySpace (founded in 2003), Friendster (founded in 2002), Orkut (founded in 2004), Facebook (founded in 2004) and others provide a database of thousands of Internet users who exchanged demographic information including interests and hobbies in order to advertise themselves and make friends online. Online communities’ users are young teens and adolescents ranging from 13 to 25 years old. Internet marketers use these databases to appropriately target advertisements.

Despite the personalized nature of Internet marketing, there are some drawbacks to using this marketing approach. The Internet marketing channel relies on users’ capabilities with new technologies over traditional media. Internet access and connection speed is a major barrier. In the nineties when users mostly relied on connections via dial-up services, large or complicated websites experienced significant content delivery delays.

The inability to physically feel, touch, smell, and try the tangible goods prior to purchase remains a barriers for online shoppers. The security of online purchases is also a major concern for e-commerce users.

A Mediapost1 survey of 410 marketing executives felt that the following barriers remained for large companies looking to market effectively online: insufficient ability to measure impact, lack of internal capability, and difficulty convincing senior management.

1 Mediapost - Why Marketers are Not Investing Online (2/13/2008)

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The Three C Model – Content, Commerce, and Community

Michael Dell, founder of the successful online computer-building company Dell.com, has proposed the Three C model, as delivered to the Detroit Economic Club in 1999, a set of basic principles that all online entrepreneurs and site builders should follow:

Content. The first stage of content means providing compelling information. This is how we started our online operations in 1993, when we put our technical databases online for customers to access. It was a relatively simple start, but it showed us the tremendous interest from our customers… (1999). By content, we mean bringing information online. Anytime you have a form, a manual, or a document, put it online. This is the foundation of any Internet strategy. Once we brought information online, it became clear to us where the opportunities were in the transaction world: simple things like order status and commerce, and we have added more complex things over time. The key, again, is that it is experiential and you learn by doing (2000).

Commerce. The next stage is commerce, which should be thought of as all transactions, not just buying things over the web. In fact, our first activity in this area had nothing to do with purchasing. It was simply order status… (1999). You should think of this as any kind of transactions. Our first experiment with transactions really had nothing to do with "commerce." It was an online order status tool. We knew we were on to something when, in the first week, five thousand customers used this tool -- and we didn't even advertise that it was out there. This formed the foundation of our online sales effort (2000).

Community. The final stage is developing an online community. We are building two-way relationships over the web with both our customers and our suppliers. [The goal is] establishing communities of suppliers and end users that share common interests (1999). Our ultimate goal is to deepen relationships with customers by providing added convenience, efficiency, and cost savings, and a wider array of services. The Internet creates an opportunity to move these key transactions online and drive transaction cost to almost zero. In summary, the Internet is changing the face of the entire economic and social structure of not only this country but the entire world, and governments have a great opportunity to embrace it. We are seeing a transition from a brick-and-mortar government to an online government. The advantages will include things like velocity, efficiency, and a better customer experience (2000).

Dell’s three C model has captured the essence of web and social marketing2. Social marketing, or building an interactive online community to build trust, loyalty, and stronger relationships with internet users, is the focus of many interactive marketing companies, as opposed to more traditional marketing companies’ prior focus on merely building or promoting a website.

The Interactive Marketing Industry

Interactive agencies are often defined as companies that provide specialized advertising marketing services for the digital space – multi-media enabled channels that an advertiser’s message can be seen or heard through (i.e. Internet, CD-ROMs, DVDs, and Lifestyle Devices like iPod, PSP, and all ranges of mobile phones.) Their services usually focus on offering a mix of web design, web development, search engine marketing, internet advertising, internet marketing, or e-commerce consulting. Specific services include strategy, creative design, video

2 This concept was later coined by the internet users as “web 2.0” in 2005

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development, and programming, with emphasis in digital lead development, digital brand development, interactive marketing, communications strategy, rich media campaigns, interactive brand experiences, and web 2.0 website designs. In essence, interactive marketing involves using technology to build brand awareness for their clients based on customers’ interactions with the brand. Its purpose is to enrich the customer’s online experience and convert users to buyers by combining wide arrays of digital media including interactive games, forums, and other web technologies.

The concept of interactive marketing was rather immature in the early millennium. The Internet in the late nineties was composed of many basic html websites and users’ expectations were not high. The Internet was a location for content and information, and for many companies, a channel to advertise, especially for e-commerce. In the late nineties, most web-marketing agencies focused on helping clients build attractive websites that have great aesthetics for users to browse and arousing its users with appropriate music. Agencies went as far as helping companies build an online presence for their brands. However, the new Millennium saw a shift in Internet usage. The concept of interactive marketing emerged and the Internet was seen as a relationship platform – a way of life for people to share with others, such as television. Specific customer contents can be customized for each individual web user that those traditional marketing tools, i.e. TV and radio, cannot easily achieve.

The interactive marketing industry in 1999-2001 was particularly competitive with many small start-up companies such as Blast Radius. Other incumbent traditional IT strategy firms and web agencies also started to orient their products to this growing interactive marketing specialization.

Traditional Strategies Firms – Existing system integrators and IT strategy firms also had their competitive edge in this lucrative new industry. With many existing IT specialists and its broad client base, IT strategy firms such as IBM Global Business Services, Hitachi Consulting, Anderson Consulting, and other “Big Five” accounting firms’ consulting branches3 competitively sold their IT services integrated with web services. MarchFIRST was another notable competitive system integrator and web consulting firm that gained interest in 2000. MarchFIRST – a prime example of the industry trend of growing merger and acquisition activity in 1999 and 2000 – was the result of a merger between Whittman-Hart, a respected systems integrator employing thousands of employees in the United States, Canada, and Europe, and US Web/CKS, an already merged company from many local and regional web agencies.

3 From 1998 to 2001, the five largest international accountancy and professional service firms were Arthur Anderson, Deloitte & Touche, Ernst & Young, KPMG, and PricewaterhouseCoopers. After the 2001 Enron Scandal, Arthur Anderson collapsed, and its consulting branch renamed to Accenture. In 2002, KPMG’s consulting branch was renamed to Bearing Point. PricewaterhouseCoopers sold its consulting branch to IBM Global Business Services in 2002 while Ernst & Young sold its consulting branch to French IT firm Cap Gemini. Deloitte & Touche remains as the only “Big Five” firm to continue its consulting branch.

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Large/Medium Web Agencies (Strategic Web Integrators) – Many large and medium sized web agencies existed in 1999-2001, which varied in specializations and expertise in IT infrastructure and web design. Those agencies that can perform both functions are strategic web integrators. Most notable were the “The Fast Five,” a group of e-consultancies including Scient, Viant, iXL Enterprises, RazorFish, and US Web/CKS (later merged to become MarchFirst.) These high profile Internet strategic consultancy companies were mostly public and focused on serving many of the dot-com businesses. Other medium sized strategic web integrators included Proxycom, Sapients, and Organic. Most of these strategic web integrators already had a strong focus and customer base in web ad and web design with substantial market share. Other competitors for the new interactive marketing specialization included medium sized web-ad agencies that had been experts in web banner and web ad designs.

Blast Radius – A brief history (1997-2000) The words ‘blast radius’ were used to describe the intense, creative energy of the founders and would later became the company’s name because it completely captured the impact, power, and growth the founders foresaw in the Internet which they also sought for their company.

Incorporated in 1997, a few graduates of the Vancouver Film School’s Multimedia program established Blast Radius’ headquarter in Vancouver, BC. During the early years, Blast Radius broke into the industry by starting to build sites for local clients such as the BC Auto Show. These early successes aside, Blast Radius’ founders knew that the real market was beyond Vancouver and Canada. In 1997, Blast Radius opened up its first client development office in New York City. This move was unusual and perhaps counterintuitive to many observers. Most companies would expand slowly and choose to open their second office somewhere geographically close; however, Blast Radius had a different vision. Blast Radius wanted to expand into the global market; it did not want to be serving local clients forever – it aimed to capture a large share of the global Internet marketing and design business just as its name implied.

In 1998, Blast Radius hired its first employee. To prepare for future growth, Blast Radius opened its first office with 800 square feet of space in Vancouver’s Gastown area. Three months later, another 1000 square feet was added. Such growth was propelled by Blast Radius’ early exposure in the video game industry. Blast Radius built websites for clients such as Infogrames (Outcast™) and Psygnosis (Colony Wars™ and Drakan™).

By early 1999, Blast Radius’ employees (or, as the employees like to call themselves, Blastees) more than doubled to 15. Blast Radius was experiencing tremendous growth: the Vancouver headquarters expanded to 4,200 square feet, and the company began to win large global clients such as Casio, Lego, Nike, Universal Studios, Atlantic Records, and MTV. Blast Radius continued to expand, and in September of 1999, Blast Radius opened another client development office in Los Angeles.

During 2000, the number of Blastees tripled from 65 to 195. A string of good news was on the horizon: a second production office opened in Toronto in July; Blast Radius’ Vancouver

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headquarters moved to a 24,000 square foot converted warehouse in Vancouver’s Yaletown neighbourhood; Blast Radius was ranked fourth on Profit’s Magazine’s annual Top 50 Hottest Start-up list; a Blastee stock option plan was rolled out; and last but not least, the Prime Minister of Canada, the Right Honourable Jean Chretien visited Blast Radius.

There was no doubt that Blast Radius grew tremendously and was very successful during its first three years. But how did Blast Radius accomplish this? Blast Radius attributed their early success to its selection of clients and its core competencies.

Clients Major clients that utilized the services of interactive marketing agencies from 1999-2000 can be broadly defined into two major categories: dot-com businesses and global brand companies. Dot-com Businesses – an era of turbulence Dot-com companies, centering their businesses on the web, gained tremendous popularity and attention in the late nineties. The possibility of selling to and reaching millions of people worldwide at a low price promised to overturn established business dogma in mail-order sales, advertising, customer relations management and many other areas. A canonical "dot-com" company's business model relied on harnessing network effects by operating at a sustained net loss to build market share. These companies expected that they could build enough brand awareness to charge profitable rates for their services later. The motto "get big fast" reflected this strategy. During the loss period the companies relied on venture capital and initial public offerings of stocks to pay their expenses. The novelty of these stocks, combined with the difficulty of valuing the companies, sent many stocks to dizzying heights and made the controllers of the company wildly rich. The dot-com companies became a substantial customer base for many online marketing companies. The success of these dot-com businesses in the financial market has given them the confidence to pay large prices for online marketing services. The focus was to grow market share, and as such the Internet site had to be built attractively and practically. Many dot-com businesses spent ruthless amounts for their sites, and as such, competition for the request for proposal bids was fierce among Internet marketing companies. Blast Radius however did not follow the industry trend; dot-com start-ups were not its focus representing only 30% of its total business in 1999. This dot-com boom seemed unstoppable until March 2000. On March 10, 2000, the technology heavy NASDAQ Composite index peaked at 5048.62, and following that, began to tank. By January 2001, the index had declined to close to half its value. It is uncertain whether or when the NASDAQ will reach its bottom. The pessimistic outlook of the dot-com business industry brought about the deaths of many online marketing competitors. Those who survived experienced at least a 30% revenue decline after March 2000. Blast Radius however was not majorly impacted, with only a 13-16% decline in revenue, thanks to its focus on global brand companies.

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Global Brand Companies

The global brand companies were what Blast Radius identified as well-established companies that spent large amounts of dollars on traditional marketing channels, but had yet to establish a potent online presence. The Internet was mysterious, yet profitable, in many global brand companies’ eyes. Many success stories existed, ranging from the early dot-com business boom to the successful conversion from traditional marketing to online marketing. A legendary conversion example was the success of the low-budget American horror film “The Blair Witch Project”, which was released in 1999. This documentary was pieced together from amateur footage and cost only around USD $22,000 to make. Yet its untraditional marketing channel gave rise to $248 million gross revenue – a record featured in the Guinness Book of Records as having the highest profit-to-cost ratio of a motion picture. The film generated a lot of discussion over the Internet. It generated an enthusiastic fan base through its seemingly real footage posted in clips online. Those online clips of the film created a snowball effect where one viewer would send the clips to other friends and viewers. Most Internet users were hyped about the documentary-like film and speculated whether the film was real or not prior to its official release. Its snowball approach online, along with its teaser poster, reinforced the documentary concept and left many thinking about the film, and subsequently many of the Internet viewers saw the movie upon its official release. The success of this 1999 low-budget film came as a surprise to many. It left many in the movie industry pondering, “how did people find out about this?” The movie created an online community worthy of discussion – something that had not been created prior. Since then, many major movie-production companies learned to broadcast their theatrical trailers online to build awareness before release. The lesson learned was that the Internet need not be an exclusive channel for sales. Rather, the Internet could be used as a tool to arouse interest in the product’s basic demographic targets and create a movement that could then turn into profits in the “real” world. The story of “The Blair Witch Project” as such attracted major global brand companies to also grow an online presence. And Blast Radius saw this as a golden opportunity. Prior to 1999, Blast Radius had focused on smaller local clients and the video gaming industry, but a turning point for the company came in 1999. Blast Radius, in a request for proposal bid, won its first major client, Casio Inc. Casio looked to Blast Radius for help in transforming the popular G-Shock brand into an online experience.

During the Internet downturn in 2000, Blast Radius continued to survive and build up its client portfolio. By the end of 2000, Blast Radius’ portfolio expanded to include large companies such as Nike and Nintendo. These large global brand companies helped foster the growth that Blast Radius needed. Its clients were established and could afford a very attractive price for premium services. What Blast Radius needed to do was to sell to these global brand companies in order to grow with them.

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Core Competencies

"Blast Radius wants to be the global hotbed for innovative customer experiences in the online world. With traditional advertising decreasing in its effectiveness, we’re helping global brands use new marketing and media strategies to reach and engage customers."

Brian Mitchinson, VP of Marketing for Blast Radius.

Blast Radius believed its success was attributable to its core competencies of design, strategy, and technology.

Design

Blast Radius positioned itself as a digital media specialist – an interactive media agency that offered its clients innovative designs that fostered interactive and community relationships between its clients’ customers and the clients themselves.

Casio’s website was a very successful example, winning numerous awards including a gold Clio Award for brand building. A close examination of the Casio website revealed its uniqueness. Unlike many of the other existing websites, Blast Radius transformed the G-Shock brand into a true online experience as a website that looked exactly like a watch. The customers interacted with the buttons of the “watch” to reach different parts of the website. The website was the product itself. It was truly an interactive online experience.

Nike’s website design offered aesthetics that were the standard to meet for many other websites. However, Blast Radius designed the website with the aim of building a community. By early 2000, Nike’s site had an online community for sport enthusiasts to share and exchange ideas for achieving better health and athletic success. Enthusiastic sport participants were engaged at Nike’s website to share ideas, and subconsciously, the website user connected Nike with the athletic and health success – the exact brand image that Nike hoped to achieve.

Nintendo’s experience was similar. Nintendo encouraged its clients to register an online profile at the online community built by Blast Radius. The online profile offered valuable consumer demographic information that Nintendo would normally have to employ a marketing research agency to collect. In exchange for the valuable information from its customers, the Nintendo website offered an online loyalty platform which kept its customers lingering longer in the online community. The more time that was spent on Nintendo’s website and more money spent online translated to a higher status in the online community (i.e. gold star and VIP status). Higher statuses created pride in customers and offered them the ability to redeem their points for t-shirts, locked game content, and special tricks for gamers. In the first 6 months’ launch of the Nintendo website, hundreds and thousands of users registered and this online community, replete with its online database of demographic information, was created.

Blast Radius understood the needs of its customers and innovatively designed the platform and marketing channel for its global clients. Blast Radius became the digital strategist that helped its clients increase revenues, profitability, brand loyalty and enhanced brand identity.

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Strategy

Blast Radius was very successful in convincing many large global brand companies to shift part of their marketing expenses to online. Blast Radius differentiated itself by focusing on the root causes of declining marketing ROI and convincing and helping clients to turn the tide on declining returns by offering an interactive online experience for their customers.

Blast Radius’ strategy was an organic growth approach where it would win the business, then hire the staff needed for its in-house production to achieve the goals of the project. In fact, winning the Casio contract was a bold move for Blast Radius; at the time, Blast Radius did not have the capacity to take on such large project. In this way, the clients won forced Blast Radius to grow and expand, and this growth strategy continued to be employed to attract future clients.

Vancouver also provided an excellent site to complement its organic growth strategy. In 1999-2000, Vancouver attracted many enthusiastic digital media specialists. Blast Radius formed a strategic partnership with the Vancouver Film School, which later became a human-resources powerhouse for Blast Radius. Many current employees at Blast Radius were local Vancouverites and graduates of the Vancouver Film School.

Blast Radius was very successful in getting its clients to share and understand Blast Radius’ belief in the urgent need to re-invent marketing for the new, connected world. Blast Radius was very persuasive in helping understand the possible win-win balance between customer aspirations and bottom-line performance, such a balance that wasn’t possible in the past with traditional marketing methods.

Technology

The ability to apply frontier technology to business helped Blast Radius deliver products that put them ahead of their competitors. Most ad agencies were poor at creating or applying new technologies. Conversely, there were many “tech-wiz” companies out there who could trumpet technology well beyond Blast Radius’ capabilities. But few, like Blast Radius, could package the technology in such a way that clients would trust and subsequently deliver a winning contract. Not only did Blast Radius have the technological expertise, but it was the application of it that made Blast Radius valuable. For example, to build the interactive watch that was featured in Casio’s website, they used Flash technology, then a groundbreaking presentation tool. However, it was not Flash that gave rise to Blast Radius’ success; it was the understanding of their customers that enabled Blast Radius to have seamless integration of experience, design, strategy, and technology (See Exhibits 1, 2, and 3 for further details on Blast Radius).

Moving Forward

To sustain growth, Blast Radius recognized that it must continue to analyze its growth strategies and create ways to expand on its core competencies. In the past few months, Blast Radius had brought a wide-array of people from diverse backgrounds into the company. It hired technologists (though not necessarily web specialists), marketing specialists, business strategists, and traditional IT strategy ex-consultants into its fast, growing interactive media agency. Blast Radius continued to pay referral bonuses and hired based on its referral networks. It also utilized headhunting firms to hire for its VP positions. But were these

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strategies sufficient to continue its success? How should Blast Radius manage growth and best integrate these newly acquired diverse employees? What would be the most appropriate measure for Blast Radius’ organic growth strategy?

It is clear that most markets follow a curve of boom and consolidation. And Blast Radius had lived through this cycle as the dot-com businesses boomed, floundered, and then consolidated. As a medium-sized business that had the ambition to become a global player, how should Blast Radius respond to the looming uncertainties? And would its current core competencies suffice for Blast Radius to continue to achieve success and reach the next chapter? What should it do during this turmoil in the industry?

The Year 2001 was just beginning. Gurval pondered what to do as he stared at his computer screen at three o’clock in the morning…

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Exhibit 1 – Blast Radius’ Services (from blastradius.com4) Is the YouTube-Facebook-Digg marketplace giving you trouble? This new consumer environment definitely represents some interesting times. With the internet population expected to exceed 1.3 billion this year, here are a few questions we want to help marketing executive(s) answer: "How do I create a billion person brand – one that’s driven by my company’s values and beliefs and supported by my customers through communities?"

"How do I enable virtual communities to grow exponentially so each voice merges to shape a greater experience for all?" The answers are rooted in getting thisclosetoyourcustomers and creating brands that are destinations; environments and great experiences that allow customers to relate, create and succeed. At Blast, we help you figure out what’s relevant to your customer and then deliver it. We blend strategy, technology and design capabilities to deliver these services:

1) Open Brand Strategy First we talk about your goals. That’s step one. Step two is about getting close to your customers. Hearing their dreams, understanding their frustrations, discovering their wants, desires – and yes, the holy grail of marketing: uncovering their unmet needs. These are the insights that will allow you to engage customers in ways that you’ve probably never imagined before. Make no mistake: this has no resemblance to your media planning or communications planning processes. This is exclusively about gaining access to the innermost thoughts of your customers. Then, and only then, we are ready to align the two planets: your business goals and the customers’ dreams. What is created is a marvellous thing: it is the idea for a unique customer experience that delivers on both. Then, we roll-up our sleeves and figure out how to bring it to life. This is the pragmatic part: ROI, timeline, tactics. Our customer strategy capabilities include:

• Customer Insights (not your old stuff – new, meaningful insights) • Social Networking Integration – or as Forrester would say, "customer relationship maps" • Digital Product/Service Extensions • Cross-Channel Commerce • Business requirements, business process design • ROI analysis

4 Retrieved February 7, 2009

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2) Experience Design & Development

Yes, ideas are great. But ideas that are realized are far better. So let’s talk about what it takes to bring a new customer experience to life for your company. You may need what we call a "community relationship hub". This is a place where people interact with your brand around a shared ideal (which is to say, around a shared passion or mission). It is a community with a purpose. This is when our award-winning designers from around the world work their magic. They understand what it takes to deliver on a unique idea. They understand how to build something with a sound infrastructure and something that is measurable. We live and breathe customer experiences. One of the top ATG teams in the world (Blast Radius was recognized as ATG EMEA Full-Service Interactive Agency of the Year 2006 and 2007). Here’s what we can provide when you are ready to implement:

• eCommerce • eCRM • Content Management

3) Management & Optimization

So how do you know if your new strategy and customer experience are delivering as promised? We set you up to measure the ongoing activities of customers and to optimize ROI. Senior Blast strategists work with you to analyze how customers are responding, to identify trends, and to uncover new opportunities. Our analysis and optimization services include:

• Rich Media Design and Development • Consumer Insights (Social Research, Customer Segmentation and Site-Side Analytics) • Search Engine Marketing (Sponsored Search, Search Engine Optimization) • Multi-Channel Expansion (Interactive advertising, Online Video, Mobile, In-Store) • Customer Relationship Expansion (Personalization, Behavioural Targeting, E-Mail)

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Exhibit 2 – Credo (from blastradius.com5) Here's how it used to be. Marketing was about landing customers and migrating them across your product lines. The process looked something like this: acquire customer, cross-sell, up-sell, repeat. People used terms like 'wallet share'. But there's something off kilter about this. It's like we're describing an assembly line rather than a branding strategy. Are your customers widgets or people? We assume they are people. And this assembly-line mentality is why consumers are rebelling. It's why they've stopped paying attention to advertising. We believe there is a way to get people to tune back in. It has to do with a certain magic that happens when brands become innovative experiences that make people's lives easier, better, richer. This magic happens when a brand becomes a forum for sharing interests and passions (check out EA's Madden Challenge). People get interested. Customers turn into fans, and fans turn into advocates who spread the good word, doing more for your brand than any ad ever could. The web is not just another channel to push polished messages. It's about brands inviting people to engage around a cause – which is to say a passion or a mission. Together, brands and consumers create content, tools, services and other useful stuff that serves the cause. This may sound lofty, but we promise you, it's not. This is what we do every single day. We have our own brand of magic here at Blast Radius. It consists of 400 people from 25 nations and 5 religions, collaborating to turn ideas into reality that sells. Our brand is a beautiful mesh of business strategy, experience, design and technology. It is an open culture that we've spent a lot of time to create and we invest a lot of time to nurture. Cited by Forrester Research as one of the top agencies focused on marketing approaches for social networks (Marketers Struggle To Deliver Value When Treating Social Networking As A Traditional Channel), we believe advertising is dead and that companies need open brands – brands without boundaries or tight controls. Ultimately our mission is to help marketers get results. One last thing. Blast Radius is an ATG Accredited Partner – the highest level of technical recognition possible. Since 2001, Blast Radius has worked closely with ATG on over 50 successful project launches. Now that's solid experience. Blast Radius - since 1997. Open brands for a connected world.

5 Retrieved February 7, 2009

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Exhibit 3 – Company Profile: About Us (from blastradius.com6) Name: Blast Radius Born: 1997 Birthplace: Online Status: A proud member of the Wunderman and WPP Group Vital Stats: Over 400 people including passionate business strategists, creative designers, technology visionaries and architects. Location: We are from 25 nations around the world and have homes in Amsterdam, London, New York, San Francisco, Toronto and Vancouver. Interested In: Helping major consumer-facing brands revolutionize marketing and branding. Our Beliefs: When it comes to advertising, consumers are done. Their patience is tapped out and they've run for the hills. Well, more precisely they've run to the Internet. They've banded together in online networks of friends, peers and advisors, far away from the reaches of advertisers. What's a marketing strategist to do? Here at Blast Radius we believe there is only one way forward and it is this: enlist customers and let them tell you what's relevant. Create a brand strategy through their eyes. Yes, customers will get involved and they will get vocal. Don't let that rattle you. Just be ready to absorb and respond. Above all, show that you're not afraid to experiment or to trip up now and again. That's how you acquire street cred. When it comes to engaging customers we believe something magical happens when companies legitimately help consumers figure out if products are a good fit. People start to see you in a new light. You move from the category of product-flogger to consumer ally – and trust us, this is a move worth making. So what does all of this really mean? Commoditization can be overcome. Brands can thrive despite this anti-advertising consumer headspace. It's all a question of how you engage people. Are you ready to trust your customers? Description: We are a strategic interactive agency focused on a new approach to marketing that advocates moving away from interruptive traditional marketing and toward strategies that engage and create open brands.

6 Retrieved February 7, 2009