Mike Burns co-founded “Fuel Industries”:http://www.fuelindustries.com/ in 1999 and has since led its evolution into one of North America’s most advanced online branded entertainment agencies. Fuel has created console-quality online games, worlds, viral campaigns and digital toys for major brands throughout Canada and the U.S., and has partnered with some of the world’s largest advertising agencies to help them navigate the branded entertainment landscape.
Burns has been recognized numerous times for his creative approach to game development, and has been the recipient of several industry awards, including being named one of the Top 40 Entrepreneurs under 40 by the Ottawa Business Journal. Over the past year, Fuel has doubled in size to over 85 employees, and shows no signs of slowing down any time soon.
*One Degree: Fuel Industries has managed to build quite a reputation for high impact web sites and viral campaigns – Can you tell us a little about how you got to where you are now?*
When we started Fuel seven years ago, we wanted to deliver the web applications and interactive sites that most other Canadian firms weren’t able to. We knew that web-based gaming was going to be huge in the future, and we started developing that side of our practice about five years ago. In the past few years when technology had caught up with consumer demand, we were ready to capitalize on it while other agencies were playing catch-up. Advergaming is only a part of what we do, but it’s been a major part of what has driven our reputation over the past few years.
*One Degree: What comes first – the technology or the insight?*
Category: Interactive Agencies
Fabio Orlando is Director & Chief Creative Officer of “The Autumn Group”:http://www.theautumngroup.ca/ a company he founded over ten years ago. Touting the mantra “clarity in creativity”, Fabio is as a highly strategic and adaptable thinker whose philosophy and vision are integral components of every account.
*One Degree: What’s the story behind Here’s My Baby?*
“Here’s My Baby”:http://www.heresmybaby.ca/site/start.htm is this fabulous portrait studio who has emerged from very humble beginnings. They were initially located in a mall in Thornhill, Ontario where they gained some local notoriety. That’s where our paths crossed.
After seeing some of their portraits at an associate’s house, I quickly booked a session to photograph my then one-year-old. Truly, I was impressed by the calibre of talent and professionalism.
Being ever the communications specialist (and solicitor), I approached the owner and lead photographer, Frank Cunha and told him that I had a lot of faith in his talents and that I could see this little studio doing great things. I was right.
Since then, they have moved to a gloriously designed and spacious studio in charming Kleinberg and have expanded their offerings to include Outdoor Lifestyle Studies. Their work is nothing short of beautiful.
*One Degree: Congrats on “winning a Webby!”:http://www.webbyawards.com/webbys/current.php#webby_entry_corporate How did a little shop in Kleinberg Ontario end up with such a prestigious international award?*
Sometime One Degree Contributor Tara ‘Miss Rogue’ Hunt doesn’t like to play by the rules. She started her career over seven years ago as the first-ever online marketing position in-house at a junior oil and gas firm. Soon, she decided to start her own company, Rogue Strategies.
Last summer, Tara moved to California to become the marketing director at “Riya.com”:http://www.riya.com/.
More recently, Tara joined ranks with Chris Messina and Ben Metcalfe to form Citizen Agency, a consultancy that specifically helps bootstrapped companies and startups connect with their communities. Tara continues to blog at HorsePigCow, is a “BarCamp”:http://www.barcamp.org/ evangelist and leads a community of marketing revolutionaries under the Pinko Marketing brand.
*One Degree: What is “Citizen Agency”:http://www.citizenagency.com/ ?*
Citizen Agency starts with three Citizen Agents – “Ben Metcalfe”:http://www.benmetcalfe.com/blog/index.php, “Chris Messina”:http://factoryjoe.com/blog/ and “myself”:http://horsepigcow.com/ – who are grassroots advocates, first, and community building consultants, second. Technology companies hire us to help them connect with their communities, whether established or barely there.
Our process is simple:
I show them how to be part of the community they are serving, introducing them to their community members and building communication channels for them to open up further as well as build bridges for their community to collaborate.
Chris helps them turn feedback and user experiences into improvements in the product and helps them design to become a truly essential product – open sourcing (APIs) and employing web standards along the way.
Ben’s expertise in building developer networks (he built the devnet at the BBC) comes in handy when those APIs are available. An API is no good without developers. 😉
Strategies for customer delight… not customer acquisition. The latter naturally flows from the former.