KMGi Group is a private holding of Internet companies, which includes KMGi Studios,

Intuic Intuic is a social media company founded by entrepreneur and media contributor Silvina Moschini in 2003 that focuses on brand visibility. Company history The company advises companies and individuals as to how to use social media outlets and how t ...

, TransparentBusiness, and WikiExperts.

History

Founded in 1997 in New York City by

Alex Konanykhin Alex Konanykhin (born Alexander Pavlovich Konanykhin (russian: Александр Павлович Конаныхин) September 25, 1966) is an entrepreneur and former banker. He started his career by founding a private bank in Russia towards th ...

, Nikolai Mentchokov, and Elena Gratcheva as an advertising agency. The company later shifted focus to work primarily on website design. The company name is based on the initials of the founders' last names. The company's first headquarters were located in the

Empire State Building The Empire State Building is a 102-story Art Deco skyscraper in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. The building was designed by Shreve, Lamb & Harmon and built from 1930 to 1931. Its name is derived from " Empire State", the nickname of the ...

. At that time, many of the company's employees were Russian. The company began with 35 employees based in one physical location, but has since moved to the use of a

virtual office A virtual office is part of the flexible workspace industry that provides businesses with any combination of services, space and/or technology, without those businesses bearing the capital expenses of owning or leasing a traditional office. Virtu ...

, using employees from different countries instead of just one location.

Webmercials

In 1998 KMGi introduced the use of

Macromedia Macromedia, Inc., was an American graphics, multimedia, and web development software company (1992–2005) headquartered in San Francisco, California, that made products such as Flash and Dreamweaver. It was purchased by its rival Adobe System ...

’s Flash Technology for

online advertising Online advertising, also known as online marketing, Internet advertising, digital advertising or web advertising, is a form of marketing and advertising which uses the Internet to promote products and services to audiences and platform users. ...

. Alex Mentchoukov, the agency's chief creative officer, created a way of using vector-based graphics for Web advertisements without using as much bandwidth as pixel-based graphics. From this work, KMGi became one of the first companies to create animated, television-style "webmercials" for the Internet. In August 2000, KMGi partnered with Unicast to move from using the

interstitial An interstitial space or interstice is a space between structures or objects. In particular, interstitial may refer to: Biology * Interstitial cell tumor * Interstitial cell, any cell that lies between other cells * Interstitial collagenase, ...

format for its commercials to the superstitial format, which reduced the slow-down effect of browser downloads. In 2002 the KMGi website then became the first to be carried entirely in Flash

Lingo Lingo, a contraction of language, often refers to jargon, but in a less formal or technical sense. Lingo may also refer to: Technology * Lingo (programming language), one of several unrelated programming languages * Lingo (VoIP Service operato ...

. KMGi's webmercial and other services clients have included

Volvo The Volvo Group ( sv, Volvokoncernen; legally Aktiebolaget Volvo, shortened to AB Volvo, stylized as VOLVO) is a Swedish multinational manufacturing corporation headquartered in Gothenburg. While its core activity is the production, distributio ...

Pfizer Pfizer Inc. ( ) is an American multinational pharmaceutical and biotechnology corporation headquartered on 42nd Street in Manhattan, New York City. The company was established in 1849 in New York by two German entrepreneurs, Charles Pfize ...

, DuPont,

Best Western Best Western International, Inc. owns the Best Western Hotels & Resorts brand, which it licenses to over 4,700 hotels worldwide. The franchise, with its corporate headquarters in Phoenix, Arizona, includes more than 2,000 hotels in North America. ...

Verizon Verizon Communications Inc., commonly known as Verizon, is an American multinational telecommunications conglomerate and a corporate component of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. The company is headquartered at 1095 Avenue of the Americas in ...

, and

. In addition, the agency has produced advertisements for companies including

Coca-Cola Coca-Cola, or Coke, is a carbonated soft drink manufactured by the Coca-Cola Company. Originally marketed as a temperance drink and intended as a patent medicine, it was invented in the late 19th century by John Stith Pemberton in Atla ...

Lexus is the luxury vehicle division of the Japanese automaker Toyota. The Lexus brand is marketed in more than 90 countries and territories worldwide and is Japan's largest-selling make of premium cars. It has ranked among the 10 largest Japanese ...

, and the ''

New York Post The ''New York Post'' (''NY Post'') is a conservative daily tabloid newspaper published in New York City. The ''Post'' also operates NYPost.com, the celebrity gossip site PageSix.com, and the entertainment site Decider.com. It was established ...

''.

Software and services

In 2000, the company began selling retail software and by 2004, KMGi had $1.4 million in sales of software. Part of the company's marketing plan included the distribution of free anti-spam software to consumers who watched a 30-second commercial. KMGi also created WebPresentations, a producer of online product demonstrations. In 2004 KMGi released SeePassword, a program that allowed users to recover hidden or lost passwords from

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Microsoft Wind ...

. In 2005, KMGi formed a subsidiary called Publicity Guaranteed, public relations firm. In 2010, KMGi then formed a subsidiary called WikiExperts, which says that it creates and repairs

English Wikipedia The English Wikipedia is, along with the Simple English Wikipedia, one of two English-language editions of Wikipedia, an online encyclopedia. It was founded on January 15, 2001, as Wikipedia's first edition, and, as of , has the most arti ...

articles for companies, or advises them on how to create articles themselves. At the time of WikiExperts' creation, Konanykhin suggested that Wikipedia should use advertising to generate more revenue and pay "qualified experts" to improve its content. In 2011 KMGi released TransparentBusiness software, which allows employers or clients to monitor the activity of those working for them on computers via a cloud-supported activity monitor and screenshots. In 2012 TransparentBusiness received the ''PC World'' Latin America Rising Star Award for the Best Cloud Computing Solution for Enterprise.

References

External links

*
Official Website
{{DEFAULTSORT:Kmgi (Advertising Agency) Advertising agencies of the United States Public relations companies of the United States Companies established in 1997 Companies based in New York City 1997 establishments in New York City