Culver City social media marketing firm theAmplify, which launched in January 2014, has broadened its range of creative offerings to include green-screen video production for campaigns on Instagram featuring popular influencers.
The first video campaign produced in-house launched- earlier this month. It features 10 different Instagram celebrities promoting “Insurgent,” the latest installment in the “Divergent” film series produced by Santa Monica’s Lions Gate Entertainment Corp.
Each clip features a different scene from the film’s virtual-reality experience. Fans must click through each of the 10 influencer profiles in order to continue watching the story. Thus far, each of the 15-second videos has garnered tens of thousands of likes.
“The views are in the millions for this,” said theAmplify founder and Chief Executive Justin Rezvani.
The individual influencers, including 16-year-old Disney Channel star Madison Pettis, were chosen based on data culled from theAmplify’s analytics platform.
“Our technology … assessed audiences to ensure they aligned with the targeting parameters of the ‘Divergent’ series,” Rezvani explained.
He declined to disclose revenue figures or how much the company invested in building out its video production studio.
TheAmplify now works with more than 1,000 influencers across Instagram and Snapchat.
IPhone Chic
While it might sound odd at first blush, jimmyBrands founder Daniel Smith said his former job supervising DVD and online production for Playboy Enterprises Inc. in Beverly Hills helped him in his new venture – building and selling iPhone cases.
“I saw there was this great business model in using social media to drive traffic to a website,” said Smith, who founded the company from the garage of his Glendale home in 2013.
He got the idea for his product, known as the jimmyCase, after he started looking around for a stylish iPhone case that could also hold his credit cards and driver’s license. He didn’t like what he found, so he decided to build one for himself. Impressed by his efforts, he figured others might like it, too.
The finished product features a silicone shell that holds a back made of mahogany wood. Wrapped around the wood is a colorful elastic band that grips your cards and ID. All the materials are sourced from local suppliers.
After building the cases in his garage for the first 10 months, Smith moved production to an East L.A. factory in October.
Though the majority of people buy his cases directly from the company’s website, they can also be purchased at Venice gadget store Tech Studio and Highland Park sunglass shop Society of the Spectacle.
The cases, also available for the Samsung Galaxy S4, retail for $39.
The company generated about $80,000 in revenue in December during the busy holiday season. Monthly sales this year have been lower so far, though Smith said the company is nearly back at that figure.
“The cool part is the margin’s great,” Smith explained. “We’ve got like a 75 to 80 percent gross margin.”
Home (Pre)School
A few years ago, Brentwood’s Chalk Preschool kept hearing from parents across the country who wanted the company to open a branch in their town.
With five locations, including outposts in Venice and Westwood, the company’s co-founders knew they didn’t have the resources to expand brick-and-mortar locations that quickly.
So they opted to bring Chalk’s hands-on approach to early childhood learning to the Web. Their free site, Chalk Preschool Online, launched in November 2012. It allows parents to supplement their toddlers’ preschool classes with about 8,500 educational videos that can be viewed on desktops, smartphones and tablets. In January, the school beefed up its digital offerings with a $12-a-month subscription service featuring 800 videos designed to be more fun and entertaining than its lessons.
The content for the premium site was created by Jenna Capozzi, chief executive of Capozzi Productions in La Crescenta, who worked closely with Chalk Executive Director Angela Johnson on each script.
Capozzi said Chalk has invested $2 million to build and market its website so far and more content will be added every three months.
Thousands of people have watched the site’s free videos, she added.
“We’re creeping up on that in the premium site,” Capozzi said.
Staff reporter Omar Shamout can be reached at [email protected] or (323) 549-5225, ext. 263.
