EVB Builds up Integrated Offerings, Spins out Digital Shop

Advertising agency EVB has established a new division to focus on digital production.

The San Francisco-based agency, launched nine years ago as a digital shop, has built up its integrated advertising offerings in recent years. With this move, the new division called EVB Productions will provide a dedicated team of 15 to 20 people, including some contractors, to work on the production of digital ads.

Having passed on several production-only or digital jobs over the past few years to work on cross-channel campaigns, the agency decided it was time to form EVB Productions. “As the agency becomes more full-service, we found that we had extra digital production capacity. It just made sense to figure out a way to unbundle it, package it, and offer it up to other agencies,” said Daniel Stein, CEO and founder of EVB. Thus EVB Productions was born.

“Production in the digital world has so many layers, architecture, different types of programming, 3D, video,” he said. “We say production; we mean tech, graphics, video editing, post-production, and we mean server-side production as well.”

Over the past few years it’s transitioned from work such as an interactive site it created for the FLY pentop computer for client Leapfrog or a campaign for Old Spice to expand to full-service work including print, outdoor, in-store, and TV.

“Within the last year, the agency has taken huge steps in growing its capabilities to include a lot of non-digital work. Right now, the agency’s output is about 50-50 — digital to non-digital,” Stein said.

Meanwhile, EVB, which will revert to its earlier name, Evolution Bureau, has another 20 workers — in addition to the 20 from EVB Productions — at its 20,000-square-foot offices at 1596 Howard St., San Franscisco.

The production unit will be headed up by Andrew Walter, who has been with EVB for about two years. Before EVB, Walter spent five years at OgilvyOne, where he ran the project management and digital production departments in New York and was the director of operations in San Francisco.

While EVB Productions will officially go live in mid-March with the launch of its Web site, it already has three big projects in the works with outside agencies. Stein would not disclose specifics on the agencies or brands, except that work was due out in the coming weeks.

Omnicom acquired EVB in 2006.