Mark Netter Named Vice President for Business Development at Agency BLITZ

SANTA MONICA, CA (May 7, 2012) – Mark Netter, 51, has joined strategic digital agency BLITZ as vice president of business development, announced Ivan Todorov, co-founder and CEO. Netter’s career spans business development for digital and social media marketing as well as production in film, television, and videogames.

“Mark brings uniquely relevant experience and capabilities in today’s digital marketing and social space. We look forward to the new opportunities in the months ahead,” said Todorov.

“I’ve known Ivan and BLITZ co-founder, CCO Ken Martin for almost a decade and have been blown away by how they have grown BLITZ into a full-service digital agency,” said Netter. “BLITZ is perfectly positioned to deliver state-of-the-art digital experiences, campaigns, and branding to top-tier clients. I’m extremely excited to be joining the team.”

Netter was formerly COO at Urgent Content Inc., in Santa Monica, CA, which was formed in 2009 by programming executives from Al Gore’s CurrentTV to create original video content that captures the consumer’s voice, synced with social media strategy and execution.

Previously, he was regional sales director, West, for New Media Strategies, a pioneering social media agency based in Washington, D.C. (part of Meredith Corporation since 2007.) 

Here, Netter earned business from corporate, entertainment and public affairs clients throughout the Western U.S., developed strategic proposals and worked with client teams on social media promotion and intelligence initiatives.

Earlier Netter held positions as director of business development for mobile social network Zannel, Inc. and entertainment ad agency Deadline Advertising. Clients he has worked with include Adobe Systems, Capitol/EMI Music, CBS Daytime, Disney Pictures, GSN, Intel, Lifetime Television, Mattel, McAfee, MGM Resorts International, Mitsubishi Motors North America, Sony PlayStation, Starz Media, Universal Pictures, and VH1, among others.

Netter is an MFA graduate of the New York University Tisch School of Film and Television, and an AB honors graduate from Brown University. He lives in Santa Monica with his wife and two sons and enjoys learning about movie history and writing songs on electric guitar when he has leisure time.

About

BLITZ is an independent, full-service digital agency focused on building durable connections between brands and consumers. Responsible for strategy, creative, technology, social, mobile, digital product development, search and analytics, the agency is a partner with some of the world’s favorite brands, including Microsoft, VIZIO, Adobe, Naked, FX, Dole, and Honda. Founded in 2001 and headquartered in Santa Monica, the company is over one hundred BLITiZens strong and recognized as an Agency of the Year by Ad Age.

BLITZ believes your digital agency is your most important marketing partner. Digital is the fabric of human communication and interaction, the foundation upon which progressive brands build their most valuable consumer connections. Traditional advertising alone is no longer enough. “Listening” is the cost of being heard. BLITZ has created a culture and methodology for strategy and storytelling across multiple consumer touch-points, powered by insights gathered daily from the digital and analog space. By developing an intimate understanding of human motivations and cultures we give brands the courage to behave and communicate authentically.

David Maharaj Joins Agency BLITZ as Vice President of Technology

SANTA MONICA, CA April 30  –  David Maharaj, 41, has been named vice president of technology at strategic digital agency BLITZ. Maharaj brings 15 years’ experience in software development across a variety of industries and solutions including digital media, online video streaming applications, ecommerce, content management, and open source, to his new position. Maharaj comes to BLITZ from similar positions at Razorfish in San Francisco and FOX Digital Media in Los Angeles.

“BLITZ is building digital platforms and ecosystems for brands, connecting multiple screens, content management systems, analytics, social utilities, DRM content and ecommerce,” said Ivan Todorov, BLITZ CEO. “Dave (Maharaj) brings the enterprise level platform experience and knowledge to drive our digital product development and technology offering to the next level as we partner with our clients on an increasingly inter-connected landscape of consumer experiences. We often find ourselves in competition with agencies such as R/GA, AKQA and HUGE and Dave’s addition to the team, coupled with our renowned Creative/UX/Strategy capability, ensures us a competitive advantage.“

“I am thrilled to be joining an established digital agency with a strong sense of identity, at the cusp of a growth spurt. I love the interaction and collaboration that we all come together to proactively lead and give our clients our very best. We’ve got an established and talented technology team that we’ll continue to expand to support our growth and direction to the BLITZ DNA,” said Maharaj.

In his career, Maharaj has focused on building modular and flexible solutions, balancing the immediate needs with the strategic direction of the business. He was formerly a technical architect for Avenue A | Razorfish and Acquity Group in southern California working on a variety of digital media, search engine, eCommerce and content management solutions for a variety of clients, including Fortune 500 companies.

Maharaj holds an MSEE from USC and a BSEE from California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. He lives in Orange County, with his wife, Aimee, and their two children and enjoys cooking and collecting wine in his leisure time.

About

BLITZ is an independent, full-service digital agency focused on building durable connections between brands and consumers. Responsible for strategy, creative, technology, social, mobile, digital product development, search and analytics, the agency is a partner with some of the world’s favorite brands, including Microsoft, VIZIO, Adobe, Naked, FX, Dole, and Honda. Founded in 2001 and headquartered in Santa Monica, the company is over one hundred BLITiZens strong and recognized as an Agency of the Year by Ad Age.
BLITZ believes your digital agency is your most important marketing partner. Digital is the fabric of human communication and interaction, the foundation upon which progressive brands build their most valuable consumer connections. Traditional advertising alone is no longer enough. “Listening” is the cost of being heard. BLITZ has created a culture and methodology for strategy and storytelling across multiple consumer touch-points, powered by insights gathered daily from the digital and analog space. By developing an intimate understanding of human motivations and cultures we give brands the courage to behave and communicate authentically.

BLITZ Names Cathy Saidiner President to Reinvent Digital Brand Leadership

SANTA MONICA, CA April 9 – In response to growing client demand to lead brand communication across all channels, digital agency BLITZ has named former McCann Erickson L.A. president Cathy Saidiner (47) to the new position of president, announced co-founders Ivan Todorov, CEO, and Ken Martin, CCO.

“Digital agencies are rapidly becoming the most powerful partner of progressive marketers. We recognize the opportunity for BLITZ to transform from a digital partner into a 21st century brand partner; one that is poised to lead all aspects of brand strategy and activation for our clients. We’re pleased to have Cathy (Saidiner) join BLITZ,” said Todorov. “She’s going to evolve our client relationships, allowing us to lead strategically while fortifying our existing offerings in brand strategy, creative, technology, social, mobile, digital products, search, media, and measurement.”

As president, Saidiner will lead client services and oversee brand strategy and delivery for BLITZ, leading brands from a trusted point of partnership. “Cathy has immense proficiency and knowledge around forming and managing client relationships. Our clients partner with us in our mission to create unforgettable communications and durable brand connections with consumers and Cathy’s leadership will help us sustain our recent strong growth,” added Todorov.

Saidiner’s hire comes in the wake of recent BLITZ account wins including Dole and VIZIO, and continued growth in key accounts. “BLITZ strives to give brands the courage to speak authentically across all consumer touch-points: digital, emerging and mobile channels, and traditional media platforms. Not only will Cathy serve as a leader in building stronger trusted relationships with clients, her experience makes her a valuable source of expertise inside the agency as we add new discipline groups and expand our account teams,” offered Martin.

“I couldn’t be happier to join this incredibly talented and innovative team. BLITZ is capitalizing on its digital DNA to provide a new level of brand leadership, and I look forward to helping them accelerate that trajectory,” said Saidiner.

Ms. Saidiner, who joined McCann Erickson L.A. as president in 2008, was previously global account director and group account director at TBWA\Chiat\Day (2004-2008). Earlier, she was in brand management at Mars, Inc., and was national advertising manager for Nissan North America’s Infiniti Division. She holds an MBA from UCLA’s Anderson School of Management, and a BBA in Marketing from the University of Texas at Austin.

About

BLITZ is an independent, full-service digital agency focused on building durable connections between brands and consumers. Responsible for strategy, creative, technology, social, mobile, digital product development, search and analytics, the agency is a partner with some of the world’s favorite brands, including: Microsoft, VIZIO, Adobe, Naked, FX, Dole and Honda. Founded in 2001 and headquartered in Santa Monica, the company is over one hundred BLITiZens strong and recognized as an Agency of the Year by Ad Age.

BLITZ believes your digital agency is your most important marketing partner. Digital is the fabric of human communication and interaction, the foundation upon which progressive brands build their most valuable consumer connections. Traditional advertising alone is no longer enough. “Listening” is the cost of being heard. BLITZ has created a culture and methodology for strategy and storytelling across multiple consumer touch-points, powered by insights gathered daily from the digital and analog space. By developing an intimate understanding of human motivations and cultures we give brands the courage to behave and communicate authentically.

Recently BLITZ was asked about modifying an audio driven flash site we completed a few years ago. In that time, technology on the internet driving rich consumer experiences has shifted from a plugin based platform dominated by Adobe Flash to a reliance on the native capabilities of the browser. This is significant, as it’s now obvious that mobile is the current trend in browsing. The old project utilized flash’s ability to extract sound data from a playing song and displayed an on-the-fly visualization of the data, similar to a visual EQ. This ability does not currently exist in most native JavaScript engines, though it is proposed. It got us thinking whether or not we could get this same effect running on a non-flash mobile browser. Currently IOS doesn’t support the ability to get this data from a sound file. After spending a couple hours thinking through the possibilities, we settled on a solution. We would preprocess the audio file, extracting the sound spectrum data and process that data in the browser.

The jist of the data-extraction process looks like this:

An Air application loads the mp3 file and lets the song play. As it plays, every 100 milliseconds it will grab the sound spectrum and select parts of it to use. Originally we were planning on using all 256 data points from the right channel, but a single 4-minute mp3 file was spitting out an 11 meg JSON file. Obviously this was a tad excessive… So after some tweaking we settled on grabbing 50 data points (every 5 from 0 to 250), which decreased the file size from 11 megs down to 2.5 megs. And trimming the decimal values down to only 3 decimal points (Thank You Nick Vincent for the idea) got it down to 800k, a size we were happy with. At each 100 millisecond marker, we grab the data, and inject it into an object. we use the time in miliseconds as the key (we had to round it to 100 ms) for the object. Once we have the object populated, we then serialize it to JSON and save it as a text file.

Once we had the data it was just a matter of implementation. Drop 50 dots in the DOM, each corresponding do the 50 data points of the sound spectrum, and move them around as the song plays. Implementation can vary, so we didn’t spend any real time cleaning things up for reuse, the purpose was more of a proof of concept. If we were going to get serious about it, we would write a wrapper JS file that you would pass an audio element, and the path to the JSON file. Then you’d hook up your events and let it handle the rest. If anyone has interest in taking this task on please let us know. We’d actually love to build it out time permitting.

You can view the demo here:

http://dino.blitzstaging.com/demos/soundspectrum/

Please note, the demo only works in safari, chrome and IOS (that was the challenge). You could easily rig this to work on firefox, just wasn’t a priority.

And you can get the source here:

https://github.com/dinopetrone/SoundSpectrum

The source has both the air application and a www folder containing the demo. To get the air application running you have to open in flash and build. I didn’t create an actual .air file. You will also have to run sass to compile the css (sorry its just how we do things here at BLITZ)

Coming from the flash world, I was very much sick of sound visualization. So please don’t take this and just create another sound visualizer… that’s lame. If you have any practical use please let me know. Also, one disclamer, all of this needs a good deal of polish. Again, it was just a POC spike.

If you’ve read all the way to the end of this article and are interested in doing work like this, we’re always looking for people to join the technology team. Check out our Careers Page for a list of open positions.

On August 18, 2011, Sr. Director, Technology Noah Gedrich had the honor of delivering our agency’s values and philosophies on technology at the Ink + Chase Sessions, held at the Kyoto Grand Hotel in Downtown L.A. As part of their ongoing mission to help small businesses leverage technology, Inc. Magazine and Chase have teamed up to deliver these panels to small business cardholders.

What started as a high-level discussion about the online channel and how it can be best used to drive sales, increase returning customers, set one’s business apart from competitors, and take on larger corporations, it quickly turned into an education on the mobile channel. Because the past four years have seen a dramatic increase in mobile usage among consumers and businesses, it’s no surprise that the chat began to skew in this direction.

Given the fact that every major smart phone has their own branded app stores, there were several questions regarding the cost implications of developing a mobile app. To that, Gedrich quickly struck down skepticism with the way we at BLITZ think about mobile apps with a simple question: “Does it have to be an app?” He went on to lead the discussion around the mobile web as a whole saying that “no one should be afraid of entering the space due to cost,” because there are several options, such as optimizing a site for mobile that can, for the most part, offer some of the same services.

Overall, the panel was well received by the diverse group of attendees, who ranged from college professors to large-business owners. Throughout the discussions, Gedrich worked to deliver the message and importance of the online space as a whole, rather than simply focusing on mobile. Three things he left his audience with as key takeaways were:

1: Businesses of any size can use the full digital ecosystem to connect to consumers wherever they are throughout the day.

2: Digital is the best way to measure the successes and failures of marketing efforts, and is the only channel that allows business to alter and optimize their efforts in real time.

3: The online space allows businesses to appear as small or as large as they want their audience to perceive them — it’s up to the business to determine this and cater their marketing to meet the desired outcome.

Other speakers included:
1: Maisha Walker (Moderator) – Inc. Magazine, Journalist
2: Dave Stritzinger – Flipswap, CEO
3: Michael Scheider – Mobile Roadie, CEO

Watch Noah Gedrich deliver BLITZ’s views on tech.