He's No Agency Man

Founder: Ian Schafer, 36

Company: Deep Focus

Founded: 2002

Site: deepfocus.net

What Deep Focus does: To call Deep Focus a digital advertising agency would be an understatement. Deep Focus was one of the first to focus on consumer engagement through media planning and buying, creative and technology, communications and social media, branded entertainment and mobile applications. 

How he’s changing the game: So, what is “consumer engagement?” Let’s look at a project Schafer is most proud of. AMC network hired Deep Focus to “engage” more viewers for their show Mad Men. They were given the task to draw a million new viewers to the show for its third season. Recognizing that people were beginning to use their Facebook or Twitter logins to login everywhere on the web, the agency created a “Mad Men Yourself” application that allowed people to build an avatar of themselves in 1960s style. The avatar then became their Facebook photo and their Twitter icon, and this avatar also accompanied them every time they commented on a blog or signed on to a website. “We were able to take an animated representation of somebody that has nothing to do with the series and turn it into something that was so quintessentially Mad Men,” said Schafer. “It caught on in a huge way and it crossed over in an even bigger way. It was at the center Entertainment Weekly’s “Bullseye,” it was on Oprah.com, and it was the single largest influencer of new viewership to the show, and the price was the cost of development.” 

Nine years ago, Schafer recognized that advertising agencies, even digital agencies, were becoming very siloed – media agencies were commoditizing media buying, PR agencies were doing PR, and creative agencies were becoming too highly specialized or turning into production facilities. However, Schafer also recognized that people’s consumption of information was moving in the opposite direction. “Creative was starting to look like media, media was starting to look like creative, and social media was starting to change the way we make decisions,” said Schafer. “People started communicating more and more about brands and products and helping each other with decisions, which is different than the way it used to be. People used to make decisions in a very linear way. Now we’re starting to consult other people and do a lot of research. I felt that the way agencies were structured was not conducive to that. We needed to rediscover marketing in which advertising is only a subset.” 

What’s next: In October 2010, Deep Focus was acquired by UK’s Engine Group for an undisclosed amount. Unlike most agency deals, the acquisition was not structured as an earn-out and Schafer will remain CEO. 

“There’s no earn out scenarios for the owners or founders of the agency, so no one bails,” said Schaffer. “Generally what we see happening is agencies getting acquired by holding companies and being held to an earn out which affects the decisions that are made over a course of three years. Typically, those decisions are so soul sucking that the founders of the agencies leave. They leave the agencies without the culture that got them to where they were in the first place and you’ve got a revolving door at the top and the agency becomes commoditized. I did not want that to be the future of this agency, I do not want that to my immediate future. This acquisition became an opportunity for me to continue to build something without being hampered by the things that were preventing it from reaching its full potential, such as cash flow. For example, the deal with Engine gives us the flexibility to win business globally. I didn’t want to take my foot off the gas pedal and this acquisition allows me to push it down harder.”