Avenue A/Razorfish

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The correct title of this article is Avenue A | Razorfish. The substitution or omission of a | is due to technical restrictions.

Avenue A | Razorfish Inc. is one of the world's largest interactive agencies and is an operating unit of Seattle-based aQuantive, a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft. Avenue A | Razorfish works with companies to build websites and the digital marketing programs that drive traffic to them. The company works in numerous digital areas, including advertising, web design & development, intranets / extranets, search engine marketing, email marketing, and emerging media.

Avenue A | Razorfish has about 2,000 employees worldwide, with U.S. offices in New York, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, Philadelphia, Portland, Boston, Los Angeles, Atlanta, Austin, and Fort Lauderdale. In 2005-2006, it expanded overseas through acquisitions in London, Paris, Sydney, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Beijing, Berlin, Frankfurt and a joint venture in Tokyo.[citation needed] Avenue A | Razorfish clients include AT&T, Capital One, AstraZeneca, Best Buy, Carnival Cruise Lines, CondéNet, Ford Motor Company, Disney, Kraft, EMC , Kodak, Williams Sonoma, Adidas, JPMorgan Chase, Wyeth Pharmaceuticals, and the Wall Street Journal.

Contents

[edit] Awards

Ad Age named Avenue A | Razorfish 2005 media agency of the year. Forrester Research ranked it as a top-tier web design agency in its 2006 Web Design Agency Shootout. Its work for Mercedes-AMG won the 2006 Webby Award for Best Automotive Site, and its redesign of NYTimes.com has garnered a 2007 Webby for Best Newspaper Site.[citation needed]

[edit] History

[edit] Beginnings

Razorfish was founded in New York in 1995 by Craig Kanarick and Jeff Dachis with the motto "Everything that can be digital will be." It and other New York-based Web design companies formed the core of a cluster of New Media companies known as Silicon Alley.

At its peak, the company had $260 M in annual revenue[citation needed], and a market capitalization of over $6 billion. Its early success led it to be included in what the industry dubbed "The Fast Five," a group of "e-consultancies" that also included Scient, Viant, iXL Enterprises and USWeb/CKS, which was bought and rebranded MarchFirst. The "Fast Five" was affected negatively by the downturn in the Dot-com bubble which began in 2000, and Razorfish saw its revenues plunge to $50.1 million during that year. In February of 2001, Razorfish laid off 400 employees, roughly 20 percent of its staff, with its stock price descending from a February 2000 high of $57 to just $1 per share.

Razorfish, Inc. was eventually acquired by SBI Group (formerly SBI and Company) in 2004 it was renamed to SBI.Razorfish. The company was again renamed as Avenue A | Razorfish when the SBI.Razorfish division of the SBI Group (formerly SBI and Company) was acquired by aQuantive, Inc in 2004.

SBI also purchased other assets from "The Fast Five," including Scient/iXL, MarchFirst (formerly USWeb & CKS Group), Emerald Solutions, Lante, and Xcelerate; many of these companies' employees still survive today as part of the new Avenue A | Razorfish team[citation needed].

The Avenue A | Razorfish combination in 2004 resulted in the largest interactive agency[1] which married a pioneer in web marketing with a pioneer in site development.

[edit] Acquisition by Microsoft

Microsoft announced on May 18, 2007 its intention to acquire Avenue A | Razorfish as part of a $6.0 billion cash purchase of parent company aQuantive.[2] The transaction closed on August 10, 2007. Continuing under the leadership of Clark Kokich, Avenue A | Razorfish is now part of Microsoft's newly created Advertiser and Publisher Solutions (APS) Group. The APS Group is run by Brian McAndrews, formerly CEO of aQuantive, who reports directly to Kevin Johnson, president of Microsoft's Platforms & Services Division (PSD).


[edit] References

  1. ^ TOP 50 INTERACTIVE AGENCIES - Advertising Age - DataCenter: Agencies
  2. ^ Microsoft Press Release, 18 May 2007

[edit] External links

[edit] Official sites