Category: Companies

There is now a species of Razorfish called Victor, or Xyrichtys victori to be precise. I know this because the man who discovered it off the coast of the Galapagos, Benjamin Victor, just wrote to say Hi. He sent a picture too, of the male and female:

Cute little bugger, yes? Benjamin compares it to the company of the same name: “why they chose that name I cannot understand, since razorfishes dive into the sand when disturbed, not a good image!” But hey, these are the survival techniques that evolution teaches.

This time for $160 million, by aQuantive, who owns Avenue A. SBI had picked up Razorfish for $8.2 million less than two years ago, but also added MarchFirst, iXL, Scient, Lante, etc. to the mix. Would be interesting to do the math and see how much SBI actually made on the flip (sorry to put it in cold financial terms, but I think that’s all there is to it).

It’s an amazing brand story as well. Consider the strength of the Razorfish name:

• In the early days Razorfish acquired several other companies but always kept the Razorfish name.
• After SBI aquired the companies mentioned above, it only rebranded after acquiring Razorfish.
• And now it lives on as Avenue A/Razorfish.

That name is probably a temporary combination to educate the market, it’ll be interesting to see what the final name becomes. Certainly a lesson in building a brand reputation, even an infamous one.

Contrast with how Semaphore — along with some others — was recently folded into Arc, part of the Publicis group. I’m kinda sad to see the old Semaphore site go away, they had a niche that made sense.

Press release. For me it means new service offerings (process design, supply chain management, integrated marketing) and a return to having a presence in Europe. As opposed to the July 2002 acquisition of Scient‘s ‘certain assets and operations,’ SBI acquired all of Razorfish.

Of SBI, Gartner says

• Verticals: Energy, Finance, Consumer Packaged Goods, Retail, Transportation, Hospitality, Health Care, Telecommunications
• Practice areas: Enterprise management, customer collaboration, integrated marketing, supplier collaboration
• Investors: GE Capital and Cerberus Partners
• Calls them ‘Business Process Architects’ (services providers that are consulting-intensive and retain in-depth business process knowledge for specific vertical markets).

Of the media reports in general, I was surprised at how often the press release was simply regurgitated or the writers took the opportunity to dig up titilating-yet-ancient corporate history. Forrester – whose business, ironically, is not breaking news, – gets credit for original thought (‘SBI has only acquired five of the dozens of firms up for sale. After hundreds of conversations with different potential targets, it believes it has picked up the best assets available.‘) as does Inside Consulting (‘So while the IBMs, Accentures and EDSs battle for big-buck contracts near the surface, SBI and its counterparts will pick at the pieces that drift downward.‘)

Anyway, it seems Andrew Ross, an American Studies professor at New York University, has excellent timing in the release of his book No-Collar: The Humane Workplace and Its Hidden Costs. I read an except a while ago and was surprised to find it accurate and insightful. One description of the book says,

Though urban knowledge workers enjoyed unprecedented autonomy and bargaining power, and their bohemian artisan style evoked a pre-industrial craft ethos, the volatile economy exposed even the rank-and-file to 24/7 schedules, emotional churning, and the kinds of pressure typically borne only by senior managers. With his characteristic mix of laser-sharp analysis and deft storytelling, Ross asks: How humane can, or should, a workplace be? In documenting the quixotic life of these neo-bohemian workplaces, No-Collar records a unique moment in American history and reveals what the landscape of work will look like for decades to come.