15th Jun 2011, written by Nuri Djavit

Last Exit 2011

A colleague from my previous agency recently posted a picture of Vegas, my English Bulldog and the mascot of two companies, perched atop a desk with a Union Jack hanging behind him. He had just come from a breeder in Connecticut, a week after 911 and brought joy to everyone in the company. Vegas has now just had his tenth birthday and set me in a reflective mood. Time really passes and leaves many behind! Shortly after that photograph was taken, I parted ways with the company for whom, and with Fred Brown, I had launched a US office and brought clients such as Kenneth Cole. Awesome times with awesome people that I will forever cherish. That company gave birth to phenomenal companies such as Poke, Glue, De-Construct, tonic and within a short time Last Exit. I had registered the name in 2002 in order to run a couple of projects for the likes of Apple (QuickTime) and Weil LLP but always thought I would end up working with a big fat agency or in-house somewhere. Paul Newnes and old friend who I had once played rugby with back in the UK, found me in New York via Friends Reunited and soon convinced me that we should launch the company properly and officially. So, in early 2004 Last Exit took real offices in Tribeca and built a team along with some interesting IP. As we expanded, Fred Brown and I continued to explore ways to work together and bridge the gap between London and New York and 2008 his company Seriously was brought under the Last Exit brand.

So, here we are in 2011 and I was perusing through our archive considering material for our brand spanking new website I, took a trip down digital memory lane. The differences in approach to digital asset development are startling. The first is screen resolution. When we started we would have to accommodate 800x600 monitors. Even 1024x768 monitors are becoming scarce in the US now! The next is the heavy use of flash. Everyone wanted it and everyone wanted whizz-bang, even if it had no purpose. We fought against it on many occasions and are very happy that apple (largely) has provided a game changer in the iPad forcing everyone to consider HTML5 / no flash websites. The last is the focus on entertainment. An expensive and risky thing to develop for sure - after all, you can't legislate what will become 'viral'. This has been moved way behind socially connected sites where assets and ideas are shared via the network effect of tools such as Facebook and Twitter.

The world of digital marketing is a different one and Last Exit has grown and matured into a full service digital agency, combing strategy and branding with media planning and social marketing.And, of course, never dropping the ball on exquisite creative execution. The channels are now many and we've grown departments in social and mobile and it's made the challenges ever more interesting and the opportunities to connect our clients with their customers incredibly more effective.

As proud of where we have come, I am also of where we started. Here's a few peaches from the archives I mentioned: