DIGITAL MEDIA

The Hyperfactory are set to launch their 10th international office in Sydney in August, spearheaded by Geoffrey Handley, company co-founder and new business director for Asia-Pacific.
The regional mobile advertising pioneers will also be introducing Snakk Media into the market, a specialist mobility-based media buying and planning agency.Handley is re-locating from Shanghai to drive the expansion in the Australia market, which he sees as reaching an evolutionary point in embracing sophisticated mobile-based and integrated digital marketing solutions.
Founded in Auckland, New Zealand in 2000, The Hyperfactory now has 150 staff in New York City, Los Angeles (two offices), San Francisco, Chicago, Hyderabad, Shanghai and Hong Kong.New York serves as global headquarters with the sales head office located in Los Angeles and technical support and solutions located mainly in the Asia-Pacific region.
While Geoffrey Handley and co-founder, brother Derek Handley, were born in Hong Kong, they settled on New Zealand as the initial focus of the company.Geoffrey Handley said the company's international success was borne from an attitude of ”never limiting ourselves to being just a New Zealand company from day one.”
“We have always won global awards and always pitched ourselves at a global level,” he said.
“We are now in a great position having experienced a lot of different markets that are at varying stages of digital evolution. Every market in Asia for instance is so different and in different places in the digital ecosystem.” He cites that the fact that 80% of advertising in the Philippines has an SMS call to action, while China has 100 million mobile phone users yet to experience 3G. Handley attributes Hyperfactory¹s strongest international fiscal growth as coming from the United States, where the company is gaining traction with significant clients such as Toyota, PNG, Avaya, Blackberry and Rolling Stone.
“In the US when they latch onto something they do it bigger, better and faster than anyone else,” he said.
He added that the US brands that they are working with, “really value research, strategy and analytics” that goes well beyond the simple execution of a digital campaign. The increasing demand for such services including content aggregation has led the company to launch spin-off company Snakk Media.
In New Zealand Snakk powers Vodafone Live! with ad serving and sales.After competing with players such as AdMob and Third Screen Media, he said there was an emerging demand for content aggregators and media/planner buyers “that specifically focus on monetising media dollars into mobile in a smart way for different markets.
”The Snakk Media concept will be aggressively pushed in the Australian market, which Handley sees as ripe for this kind of direction. The Sydney office will be staffed with an initial team of six. Handley said he wants to recruit the cream of the mobile marketing crop for both sides of the business.
The Sydney office will leverage off its international clients and relationships and will be supported by the global team, he said.Acknowledging the expansion in Australia will not be a “cake walk”, Handley aims to “build a team of the most passionate and respected executives within the industry.”
He said he wanted to capitalise on what he viewed as local carriers “aggressive and excited” stance on what mobile advertising can do for them revenue-wise.
“Some analysts suggest that the door is closed at the moment, yet the smartest people and the innovators are the ones that have not shut any door,” he said. 
And while obstructive mobile carrier pricing is still a barrier to achieving higher levels of mobile content use, Handley maintains Australia will come into line with the global trends. “By the end of the year there will be wide spread adoption of flat pricing deals. There are a lot of legacy issues but we faced this before with the web. Its not some mystical black magic science, we are working with brands and agencies to make sure that this happens.²

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