LOS ANGELES: Former GCI Group VP Joseph Riser, who left the firm's Los Angeles branch last month, has joined a new interactive PR boutique called HypeLab.
LOS ANGELES: Former GCI Group VP Joseph Riser, who left the firm's Los Angeles branch last month, has joined a new interactive PR boutique called HypeLab.
Riser, who led GCI/LA's corporate and technology group, will serve as SVP and managing director of a new LA office for San Francisco-based HypeLab, which debuted just four months ago.
The new agency specializes in online and interactive PR services for emerging tech and Internet start-ups. HypeLab founders Andy Getsey, who serves as CEO, and James Hannon, who is CIO, both came from Shafer, an integrated agency from Southern California, where they helped launch a variety of Internet leaders, including Earthlink.
Riser will develop new business in LA's increasingly hot convergence, wireless and Internet markets. He is aiming to build an initial LA-based account team of three to five employees.
'I saw HypeLab as the first public relations organization I had ever encountered where the core processes and practices had actually been built to optimize the Internet as a communication medium - the primary medium around which work with, and for, clients is carried out,' explained Riser.
'I also liked the way HypeLab was structured - more along the lines of an Internet startup with real ownership opportunities.'
