SAN FRANCISCO: Armed with dollars 30 million in new funding and inching ever closer to an IPO, online family gaming company Total Entertainment Network (TEN) has hired Phase II Strategies as its first full-time PR agency in three years.
SAN FRANCISCO: Armed with dollars 30 million in new funding and
inching ever closer to an IPO, online family gaming company Total
Entertainment Network (TEN) has hired Phase II Strategies as its first
full-time PR agency in three years.
The San Francisco-based firm was selected (along with Sausalito ad
agency Butler, Shine & Stern) to provide marketing support for TEN,
which has recently transitioned from a pay-to-play structure to a free,
ad-supported model.
According to TEN corporate communications director Garth Chouteau, PR
objectives include raising consumer awareness of the network in the
classic games arena and garnering trade and business press communicating
the Web site’s potential as an advertising vehicle.
While Seattle’s Kaufer Miller Communications (now The KMC Group) worked
with the company on its original launch, TEN had handled all PR in-house
for the past three years. No figures were available for either the size
of its PR budget or the other contenders in the review. But Chouteau
admitted that the selection had much to do with his familiarity with
Phase II’s work from his tenure at StormFront Studios, a Marin County
game developer.
’Their experience with Logitech and AOL’s pay-for-play World Play game
service - which in some ways is very similar to this - made it such a
perfect fit,’ said Chouteau.
Phase II, which boasts approximately 36 employees and brought in dollars
4.1 million in 1998, specializes in hi-tech PR and has handled many
gaming and Internet-oriented accounts.
