It’s a funny thing that Bill Nye the Science Guy (and the Disney TV show of the same name) was one of the first Seattle “exports” to demonstrate that science and technology could be both entertaining and informative.
The assistant director of the TV show, one Bill Predmore, took that magical lesson to heart. Just before shooting of the series wrapped in March of 1995, Predmore, a soon-to-be “cyber” science guy, caught his first glimpse of Netscape Navigator. His Internet infatuation soon begat the award-winning Bill Nye Website. And that experience spawned a company known as POP! Multimedia which has led the Seattle Internet movement into new levels of animation, creativity and “outside-the-box” marketing solutions.
As Founder/CEO, Predmore has navigated POP! through the Internet’s glory days and its gory days. For starters, there are prolific relationships with Nintendo, Tully’s, Microsoft, K2 and Warner Home Video. There have also been coveted website projects like Star Wars Racer, Pokemon Gold & Silver, Anne Geddes’ Nurseryroom, and the Seattle Opera. And E-mail marketing for hot media properties like The Matrix Revisited and Friends, among others.
But POP! Multimedia is more than just fun and games. Bill Predmore’s business acumen has also led to the formation of strategic marketing partner relationships with Sedgwick Rd. (formerly McCann-Erickson Seattle), and a just announced spin-off company called Ignite Technology that has a different mandate – to focus on specialized IT applications over the Web, such as affordable Web-based CRM. In this interview, Bill took Seattle24x7 on a virtual tour through POP! Multimedia history, aided and abetted by Shaughn Fitzgerald, POP!’s Director of Production, and showed us the scenic spots. Happy trails!
Seattle24x7: POP! Multimedia has a reputation as a highly creative shop that is thinking “outside the box” and doing work that is amusing as well as compelling. Is that the POP! Multimedia trademark?
Predmore: That’s certainly the message that we want to send with the work that we do – that, first and foremost, we are delivering great creative ideas. Where the value is, I think, is that regardless of the creative vision for the project—whether it’s Nurseryroom.com, where we’re integrating the Website with a fulfillment house and accounting system, or something like our work with Nintendo where we’re building a fantasy league for Pokemon—we have the technical capabilities to fulfill that vision. That’s our unique value proposition—you really can get it all at POP!
Fitzgerald: I think a lot of it creatively is not just look and feel, but content. We spend a great deal of time working with clients to try and massage the content that they give to us to make it work within our vision for the site. That’s a big part of the creative process—concepting for all aspects of the project, not just the look and feel.
Seattle24x7: Your work also seems to possess an entertaining quality to it?
Predmore: While every client’s needs are unique, I’d say that in a general sense we approach our work with clients as an exercise in telling their story. Inherent in that is the idea that delivering information doesn’t have to be like reading a textbook or brochure. It can be compelling and exciting—take Tully’s as an example. They have an amazing brand and deliver a great experience when you visit their stores. What we really wanted to do was to take that feeling that you have when you walk in and grab a latte and convey that same exact feeling to people who visit the Website. If the online experience we create is consistent with what the client is doing offline, I think we’ve done our job in helping extend that brand experience online.
Seattle24x7: Bill Nye was a show that communicated a lot of scientific information in an easy to absorb way that was a lot of fun? Do you think that having fun is an important part of Web interactivity and the creative process?
Predmore: Well, I think for the people here, absolutely. In this business, if you don’t love what you’re doing, you should probably be doing something else. The Bill Nye site was built back in 1995 because I loved the show and the message that Bill was sending. I wanted to see if I could take that same leap creatively and really enhance it for the online medium. POP! Multimedia was the result of that creative endeavor, which I think is an important distinction. Unlike many of our competitors, the focus of our company was never on stock options or an IPO—ours was a much longer-term approach. What we care about is doing interesting, creative work that delivers results for our clients.
Seattle24x7: POP! was among the earliest animators on the Web. How did you get started in that form of story telling?
Predmore: Back in 1997 we did a project for MSN and Spumco (who created the Ren and Stimpy show). When we started the project we were working in a program called FutureSplash, which was before Macromedia bought it [and turned it into Flash]. These were the very earliest days of work in Flash coupled with some of the first efforts to do any significant online animation.
The series we produced for Microsoft was called Comic Book. It was a fairly racy cartoon that we worked on for months and months. By the time we finished, the entertainment portion of MSN was shut down, so the show never aired on MSN. However, Spumco bought back the rights to the animation and then sold it again to IceBox.com in 2000. Had it been released in 1997 I believe it would have been one of the first, and certainly the most sophisticated Web-based cartoon of its time.
Seattle24x7: How ironic that Microsoft would be pioneering what would become Flash, [and is now owned by competitor Macromedia] ?
Predmore: I think you’ve got to give a lot of credit to Microsoft for using FutureSplash extensively in the release of their MSN CD-ROM. Certainly at the time it was the best work that had ever been done in FutureSplash. I imagine it contributed to Macromedia’s interest in buying FutureSplash in the first place.
At the beginning of ’97, Microsoft had a gentlemen named Michael Forney working there who I believe was one of the best FutureSplash artists on the planet. He taught us a lot about FutureSplash which gave us a great head start. I view that as one of the most important projects in the timeline of POP!, as we had the opportunity to push ourselves both creatively and technically. It was an immensely interesting project to work on.
Seattle24x7: You’ve also been involved in a great deal of Web-based gaming? Do you believe strongly in gaming as an interactive tool?
Predmore: Creating web-based gaming is certainly one of the more interesting aspects of our work. Over the years we’ve seen it move from primarily kid-based activities, like our work with PBS Online, Disney and Nintendo, to an online advertising tool that can be used to make connections with an older audience.
Seattle24x7: And Nintendo obviously looks to your online gaming expertise?
Predmore: Some of our efforts for Nintendo are geared towards creating mini-games that draw from the particular themes or characters that are in the Nintendo console games.
Right now we’re working a site for a game called StarFox: Dinosaur Planet and we’re helping Nintendo execute the online portion of that marketing plan.
Seattle24x7: How do you get engaged on these projects in terms of preparation?
Predmore: With Nintendo we’ll be involved 3-4 months prior to the release. We’ll play the game, and review whatever offline materials that are available, such as strategy guides. We’ll try and take the primary themes and gaming elements out of that and distill it down into a concept that we can build a Website around.
Donkey Kong 64 was a very interesting project in that the theme of that site was built around the idea of DKTV—a network of “channels” and “shows” that illustrated the different characters and concepts within the game—like “National Kongographic”, which explored the different “lands” in the game. You could go online and watch a new episode each week over a six week period.
From a technical perspective it was challenging as well, in that it used RealNetworks G2 player. We were using SMIL technology to weave together animation, voice-over, music and video into a cohesive, compelling experience. I would point to DK64 as another project that was a landmark piece of work for us—both creatively and technically.
Seattle24x7: How do you test the gaming from a features standpoint?
Fitzgerald: The team over at Nintendo that we work with are hard-core gamers. And they know their audience. We’ll work with them to determine that the level of difficulty of the online game is the right target for the audience we’re trying to hit.
Seattle24x7: How are you able to accurately schedule and budget projects when you’re always cutting your teeth on new technology?
Predmore: The diversity of our client base has allowed us to do a variety of different things both technically and creatively in a number of different industries. I think it’s fairly rare that you’ll have a company that’s dealing with online gaming while also working in health care, retail and home video marketing. It’s this diversity that has given us the experience to efficiently execute on a project. In any case, the majority of our work is billed on a flat bid, so we have a great incentive to make sure that we are accurate when estimating the budget.
Seattle24x7: What was the impetus for forming a relationship with Sedgwick Rd. (formerly McCann-Erickson, Seattle) ?
Predmore: I think the business model for an advertising agency and to some extent a PR agency is different than of an interactive agency. Interactive agencies are doing project based work whereas advertising agencies and PR agencies are primarily doing retainer based work. As the economy began its downturn in 2000, it became increasingly difficult for retainer-based agencies to attract interactive work. These jobs were no longer just walking in the door—they had to be won. And given the sales structure of PR and advertising agencies, in most cases I believe they were unable to make that transition.
With that in mind, we identified great opportunities to partner with agencies as a way to expand our reach, working with these agencies as partners, rather than competing against them. In the end, it is the client that benefits most—they get a consistent level of excellence regardless of whether the work is offline or online.
Our model is to partner with as many agencies as possible—much like a commercial production company would do. Let’s say you’re Copacino and you’re working with Blue Goose to shoot a Primera ad, and Sedgwick Road hires Blue Goose the next day to shoot a WaMu ad—there’s no conflict of interest—the ad agency simply works with the partner that they feel will deliver the best creative solution for their client. We believe what will keep agency partners working with us will be our ability to provide them with great ideas, great creative, and a high level of service.
Sedgwick Rd. has proven to be the best example of this type of partnership. We approached Sedgwick Rd. and suggested that a partnership could work for both agencies, and I would say it has been an extraordinarily successful relationship thus far. Over the past two months we’ve pitched and won two accounts together, including the $11m Washington State Department of Health Anti-Tobacco account. Jim Walker and his team have approached the partnership as a creative collaboration, which has provided us a fantastic opportunity to approach the work as a team.
Seattle24x7: How do you approach E-mail?
Predmore: We provide an end-to-end solution for E-mail marketing. We work with clients to develop campaign strategy, and from that develop the creative. We also provide clients with deployment and tracking services. The primary value we provide comes through our creativity, high level of service and extensive understanding of marketing through email.
Seattle24x7: Where do you see the new multimedia authoring tools (like Flash MX) leading, and are pure Flash Websites on the rise?
Predmore: I think the days of corporate Websites that are created exclusively in Flash are probably over, as there are just too many usability issues with those sites. We feel a more effective model for clients is building hybrid Flash/HTML Websites. The Seattle Opera Website is a great example. There are elements within the site that are built in Flash, but if a user doesn’t have Flash we seamlessly deliver the user a static element—like a .gif or .jpg. This approach creates an enhanced experience for users that have the Flash plug-in installed, but users without the plug-in still can still access the entire site.
Regarding your question about Flash MX, we view it as an evolutionary tool rather than a revolutionary tool. There are certainly some interesting new features to play with, including the integration of video. FlashMX will now allow you to import several types of digital video into the timeline, essentially converting the video into a series of bitmaps. However, this method is not dissimilar to how we’ve handled video in the past—it just wasn’t a built-in feature before.
Seattle24x7: So it doesn’t necessarily solve the bandwidth problem for video?
Predmore: No, we don’t think it does. Right now, we’re doing tests to compare video files in QuickTime vs. FlashMX to compare the quality of the experience. If FlashMX can actually provide the same or better user experience in terms of video quality and download time when compared to QuickTime, then it is a solution that we would likely recommend to clients.
Seattle24x7: Are you beginning to see any signs of a rebound in the Net services market?
Predmore: In terms of an economic rebound, from 9/11 through mid-December was a terrible time for the entire communications industry, both emotionally and fiscally. It wasn’t until January that we started seeing the some strength come back into the market. The first two months of this year have been strong for us, and coming into April things are still looking good. I think everybody in the communications industry recognizes that it will never be like 1999 again—but in some ways I think that is a positive thing.
We believe great value remains in interactive work—both from a marketing and infrastructure perspective. The dotcom companies that failed wasted enormous amounts of money on business models that could have never worked. Sadly, this cast a shadow over what we believe are huge opportunities for clients to use the web to market their products or to make their businesses more efficient. However, these opportunities must be driven by a business need, rather than hype.
Seattle24x7: Your latest project is for The Corporation for Public Broadcasting (CPB)?
Predmore: The team of KCTS Television and POP! Multimedia has been selected as a grant recipient for one of five new educational Internet projects targeted to America’s 16 million 9 to 12 year-olds. The project is called Don’t Buy It, a Website that will teach 9- to 11-year-olds to think critically about media.
Don’t Buy It is designed to create a community of media savvy youth. It was designed as a response to the onslaught of advertising and media directed towards this age group, the site will teach young people the skills needed to sort through all the messages they encounter.
Seattle24x7: What new business initiatives do you have in the works ?
Predmore: We are spinning off a technology-focused group that will work with the IT groups of our current and future clients. We’re calling the company Ignite Technology. While the vast majority of the work POP! has done has been with a marketing focus, we’re seeing significant demand in the marketplace for IT-focused projects. Given the state of the economy, many companies—especially small to medium size businesses—are focused on making their businesses more efficient, rather than on marketing their products or services. We believe Ignite fills this niche, providing clients custom web-based application development through an experienced and reliable technology partner. POP! will, of course, continue to offer clients a full-range of interactive services, but given the demand in the marketplace, we felt the time was right to launch Ignite.
Seattle24x7: Are we talking about interapplication communication, intranetting and extranetting?
Predmore: Intranet and extranets are certainly two solutions that Ignite will offer. So are solutions like Web-based CRM. Many small and medium sized businesses look at CRM solutions like Onyx as an unaffordable solution. They recognize that Onyx is a great product—they just can’t afford it. We believe that Web-based contact management or CRM will allow them to do many of the things that a traditional CRM solution will allow, but at a fraction of the cost.
For more information about POP! Multimedia, please visit www.popmultimedia.com or phone 206.728.7997.
Larry Sivitz is the Managing Editor of Seattle24x7.
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