Justin Kim

Catharsis

I've had a pretty diverse, multimedia-intensive career thus far as a web producer, video editor, motion graphics designer, and DVD author. I've worked at dotcoms, advertising agencies, broadcast networks, and a Japanese cult film and anime distribution company. In between, I've done a whole lot of freelance work and indie short films. As a hobby, I VJ'd and DJ'd here and there, producing music tracks every so often as well. Those were fun times.

I recently decided to go back to more steady, fulltime 9-to-5 work for most of the obvious typical reasons, but more importantly, to learn the basics of running a business. I've gone back to where I started - web, but with a different purpose. I now work as a headhunter for media and online technology firms, such as advertising agencies, web design shops, web 2.0 startups, and software companies. As a former web producer and project manager, I specialize in finding other web producers, creatives, product managers, bizdev execs, software developers, and other roles that I have worked with during my online experience. The saying, "It takes one to know one," is absolutely true in our field. Then I take all the contacts that I meet and try to see if I have anything that might be of interest to them, whether it's a job on my list or an intro to someone else that I know that might have an interesting project for them. Kharma is a boomerang.

As a habitual multi-tasker at heart (another reason why I've always loved project management), every other minute I'm also working on building my own startup company from the ground up, called Catharsis. For the past six years or so, my partner, James (behance id: jkim1207) and I have been producing massive design and music centered events, with the help of our friends in Chicago, LA, SF, and Seoul. It all started when we created the digital design tournament, Cut&Paste, and then moved on to produce other events, launch parties, screenings, concerts and eventually other design tournaments, such as the Superior Interior design tournament in LA. With all the sponsors, clients, designers, and other contacts we were making along the way, one idea inevitably came up. Instead of putting all these events together from scratch, bugging the same companies for sponsorship funds, and getting nothing in return but ticket sales and PR attention, why don't we DO THIS FOR A LIVING?

WE come up with the ideas, we have our own designers, we do a hella lot of PR, we have crews that make killer content, we know how to produce kickass events, we wrangle all the talent, we have good taste, we have good friends... and we can put it all together, into one powerful brew. We call it Catharsis, which means "an artistic explosion of emotion." Why the hell not?

It's integrated marketing - call it 360-degree, hybrid, multi-channel, whatever. It's the future of marketing and advertising, and that future is now. As a consumer in the city, we get bombarded by a million ads a day in a gazillion different places, even the bathroom. And while the designers and art directors do their part to create amazing beautiful graphics and images for advertisements, I'm still not clicking or buying anything unless I already want it, and it's got to be from a brand I trust. But for a brand, how can you really ever create a lasting impression or a real connection to your intended audience through little rectangular images on websites and huge ones on skyscrapers? It gets the word out, sure, but for how much $$$? How do you inform us about what your brand or product is about, when we're getting 5,000 other brands all shouting at us simultaneously with their products or services? I want to know more about a brand, to know whether I'm going to support them or diss them every chance I get.

We create brand experiences. We create a full end-to-end campaign to connect a brand to its most important consumer - the tastemaker, that key demographic that makes or breaks a brand through word of mouth. We do it through a combination of PR, web design, promotions, contests, events, viral video, everything that makes sense - a complete high-bandwidth spectrum of focused marketing channels that get the consumer educated, and sometimes involved in the brand's essence. We go where the they go. We know what they know. When we create a concept for a campaign, you'd better believe that there will be nothing else like it. And that will leave an actual lasting impression, and not just in CPMs.