WHAT happens after a company fails? If anything of value survives, then the best that can happen is that it gets recycled by new owners and deployed in a different and – it is hoped – more effective way.
So out of the ashes of DA Group, once Glasgow's darling of the new media, dotcom boom, comes Yomego.
There are now new owners and new managers. Group founder Mike Antliff, who soldiered on with the business for almost 20 years slipped away quietly
earlier this year, some months after the company ceased trading on Aim having burned through an estimated £11 million of investor cash.
Gone too is the company's focus on "avatars", the animated digital characters the company specialised in. Its first – and most famous – was Ananova, the stern but sexy aquamarine-haired digital newsreader bought up by Orange in 2000.
Not quite gone, actually, because the technology behind Ananova is still part of what Yomego does, as well as its other new technology platforms. Just last week, Yomego launched a beta version of its latest product. Muvizu, which allows users to create short animated films, is aimed squarely at the YouTube generation.
"If you don't know anything about design, which I don't, you can make your own animated film by downloading software," explains Yomego's managing director Steve Richards.
"It makes life really simple. You upload voiceovers and it brings to life minute or two- minute video you can do in next to no time. It is really cool."
Richards joined the company last year, along with the group's new owners led by former BT executive Stewart Davies who bought the business's assets out of administration.
Richards, who moved up from London with his Inverness-born wife, was tasked with making a go of the group.
In the run up to its collapse, the company seemed to have little focus, launching new applications of its animated characters and failing to win enough business to stay afloat.
"Before there were lots and lots of different activities we tended to take on. We were driven more by what clients wanted rather than what we were able to credibly offer," admits Richards.
"The challenge for me was to define the proposition and find out what the appetite was in the market place."
Richards favoured a more "traditional" agency approach. Yomego, now branded a social media agency, targets corporate clients to manage and create online platforms that attract young, digital-savvy consumers. Among its recent new clients is Irish telecoms company Eircom, for which it has produced a major social networking site called Soccer Republic.
In an era when a consumer complaint posted on Facebook can affect a company's share price, it is perhaps unsurprising that Richards meets up with companies that are largely clueless about how to approach social media.
"We see it every day," says Richards. "We assume some of the marketing directors were more up to speed than they actually were. We have to do a hand-holding exercise with some clients, to get them acclimatised to social media and where the opportunities are,"
For Eircom, which sponsors the national football team, the answer was a wholly-owned social networking site aimed at web-savvy football fans.
The platform used to launch the Eircom football site is based on Yomego's newly-launched, wholly-owned technology platform, Huzu, which the company sells to agencies and direct to clients. Huzu is said to be flexible and customisable, and has contributed to the group's 20 per cent growth in revenues last year.
Football Republic will for the first time bring Eircom "down with the kids" in a meaningful and useful way. "Eircom have got a bit of an image problem, the same as BT over here, in that they are a bit of an old, staid brand. They are not very cool," says Richards.
"We spent a couple of months trying to persuade them to take their logo off the site completely – that was a step too far," admits Richards, although he says Football Republic is only "very lightly branded".
But not all companies will need to create their own version of Bebo or Facebook online in order to be on top of the demands of operating in a digital world. Although some Yomego clients are commissioning them to develop virtual worlds where users can interact online with each other in animated bars and, er, hot tubs, there is a way of approaching online interaction to suit each client if only to be aware of what people are saying about your company.
"For some brands it will be getting their presence on Twitter, YouTube or Linkedin, getting their presence right and getting their offering in a palatable form for that target market, which will be totally different from how they present themselves in more traditional advertising," says Richards. "For some brands that will be it, that will be the right strategy. There is no need to create their own community."
Having brought on board Joe Hughes, who recently ran STV's website, the company has also extended a "research and insight" division which provides companies with an easy to understand review of how its brand is faring in the digital ether.
"That is becoming really popular," says Richards. "What we will do for businesses is monitor what people are saying about their brands and come up with a score, and after the campaign, it will let them know whether their score has gone up or down. Otherwise it is finger in the air stuff."
Next month, the company will take Huzu and Muvizu to Cannes to the "global entertainment content industry" shindig Mipcom. Richards expects Muvizu will be picked up and licensed for use by a TV broadcaster.
In the meantime, Yomego's ambitions are perhaps more realisable than they were before. Richards says the new owners have a two or three-year plan to make the company saleable.
"My brief is to grow revenues and get clients locked in," concludes Richards. "It is working with clients longer-term, to work with them over a number of years and manage their social media strategy."
