Founded as a homespun motion graphics studio in New York, creative strategic design agency eyeball (lowercase intentional) has, over two decades, grown into a brand-shaping powerhouse with more than 100 employees and three offices stretching from New York to Miami to Los Angeles. The company has continuously and dramatically evolved its offerings and the vision of its business without altering its unwavering commitment to the collaborative process or deviating from its artistic-minded roots.

Early pioneers in the small-scale, desktop computer-driven visual effects movement that would become the industry of motion graphics, eyeball and its founder Limore Shur first made waves in television with a show package for TLC’s Trauma: Life in the E.R. From those humble beginnings, the agency would build a portfolio of rebrands, redesigns and re-positionings for broadcast clients ranging from HGTV to VH1 to PBS.

Given that, it’s hard to imagine that for the first half of its 20-year existence, eyeball refrained from even calling itself an agency. Heavily involved in work for other agencies, eyeball’s incorporation of brand-direct work was a slow, gradual six-year process as the company delicately ventured into the strategy side without jeopardizing relations with the like-minded groups that were its bread and butter.

“It was a very interesting dance,” said Shur.

In 2006, however, the rhythm of that dance began to pick up speed. It was that year that eyeball won a pitch to launch a year’s worth of commercials for Best Buy. The resulting series of 13 spots helped grow the electronics retail behemoth’s business by $2.3 billion.

“That was our first taste of not only working directly with a brand but having a tremendous impact,” said Shur, “and realizing that our core capabilities and, at the time, instinct-based approach to creative and marketing had some merit.”

Around that same time, eyeball teamed up with Target as well, embarking on a campaign highlighting the retailer’s support of the arts. Working directly with another major company’s CMO, eyeball concocted “Art For All,” an ongoing series of installation videos such as “Art Celebrates,” featuring spectacular choreography by Alvin Ailey American Dance Theater, and the whimsical “Art Unfolds,” which was recognized in the Motion Graphics category of Communication Arts’ 2010 Design Annual.

“Those two clients gave us the confidence and the ammunition to go talk to brands directly and say, ‘we are a creative agency’” said Shur. “When eyeball was primarily run by myself, it was much more of a catch-all. We’ve always been willing to try new things but there was never a strong strategy for the company itself and maybe that’s what saved us during the hard times – we’ve always had our hands in a bunch of different pots. As we’ve become a more serious-minded company we’ve developed a much longer-term strategic and business-minded approach for the agency and the work that we do.”

Year by year, piece by piece, eyeball has transformed itself into a full-service marketing entity with the ability to see every project through from concept to completion, entirely in-house. Its moves have been savvy. In 2012 it merged with the audio production house Expansion Team, adding the crucial element of sonic branding to the mix, and the recent acquisition of a Miami-based SEO company beefed up the analytical side of its digital media offerings. Along the way, eyeball has expanded from one floor to four in its original New York office and quietly opened an additional office in Venice, California.

Founded by designers, eyeball has never lost its restless artistic spirit. Its clientele list is eclectic, seemingly bred as much from the pursuit of the next passion project as monetary interests. Clients range from Polaroid’s Cube camera, for which it recently became the agency of record, to New York Times bestselling author Sylvia Day, whose success with the Crossfire series of novels will be leveraged by eyeball’s 360-degree marketing campaign. The company has been the agency of record for Amazon’s Kindle for five years running, but also helped develop a comprehensive fundraising effort for the New York Aquarium. Last year, eyeball even executive-produced the independent documentary Alive Inside, which went on to win the Audience Award at the 2014 Sundance Film Festival.

“We’re a wildly creative group of people,” said Shur, “so instead of being driven by top-line business-oriented measurements or approaches to our work, we also trust our creative instincts that help define and make connections with those brands to their audiences in a little more emotional way… We do our strategy, we know our audience, we understand what those touch-points are, but we don’t do all that in a silo and then say, ‘OK, how can we make this work?’ It’s done as a blend so that even in our initial conversation with potential clients, we’re not afraid to have a very creative conversation to tap storytelling and narrative in order to create a common language.”

The ability to blend storytelling with strategy is a natural fit for the broadcast space. From the early days crafting promos for Trauma: Life in the E.R., eyeball has gone on to rebrand networks including One World Sports, Ovation and just this week, Oxygen. Its elegant, slow-motion promos for USA’s The Moment conveyed the show’s themes while feeding into its aura of mystery. Every year, eyeball returns to update the on-air package design for PBS’ Emmy-winning documentary series POV.

For its network clients, eyeball has a penchant for breaking the production mold and concocting innovative ways of communication that transcend platforms. A 2011 rebrand for HGTV, for instance, eschewed the typical massive, multi-day talent shoot networks often coordinate for a month-long, more candid approach in a rented studio loft. There, eyeball could shoot behind-the-scenes to capture richer, more vibrant interview footage. The resulting promo package created a deeper emotional connection between HGTV personalities and the network’s viewers, and influenced the visual vocabulary of not just the network’s promo packaging but its programs as well.

The high level of craft that pervades eyeball’s work is fueled in part by its commitment to only taking on clients “that we feel good about and are inspired by,” said Shur. These clients might be the biggest of the big, like Polaroid’s Cube camera, or they may be under-the-radar entities looking to transition into a new era of awareness, like New York Public Radio’s WQXR, which reached a whole new level of listenership on the strength of eyeball’s “Obeythoven” campaign.

“The similarities between all of these things are more than they are less,” said Shur. “The reality is, brands need to start being dealt with more like broadcast networks and broadcast networks need to start dealing with themselves more like brands. Radio needs to be more like TV. They all intertwine… they’re all creating content for various platforms. They’re all putting out messaging on various mediums. Ultimately, we’re just doing the same thing that’s always been done with good marketing and advertising: Great communication; smart contemporary work; timeless if possible; and consistency of message and brand.”

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