Ayzenberg Group lobby
As Ayzenberg Group celebrates its 20th anniversary, founder and Art Center alum, Eric Ayzenberg, reflects on the dynamics that originally inspired him to plant his professional roots in Pasadena’s Innovation Corridor.
In the early 1990s, we brought a decade of advertising and design experience acquired from both the East and West Coasts to an up-and-coming area of great potential in Pasadena. With a small crew of like-minded souls I had met at Art Center College of Design and beyond, we purchased a spacious 15,000-square-foot studio on Walnut Street, plus an adjacent 5,000-square-foot space next door, and established our agency.
Although it seemed almost like another planet compared to the ad agency epicenters of Los Angeles and Santa Monica, Pasadena possessed its own unique appeal – a fresh slate upon which to establish a new major center for professional design and digital advertising innovation. Now, twenty years later, The City of Pasadena is known as an innovation hub and has developed an impressive reputation in design and technology that is far reaching.
These are exciting times. In Pasadena, we are fortunate to surround ourselves with the brightest of the brightest … which begs an important question: How does one continue to nurture a town’s creativity and innovation?
For us, the answer has always been simple: connect with the next generation. We’ve just begun to collaborate with Art Center to teach advertising students the disciplines of digital and social media marketing and will be holding the class within our agency on a weekly basis. In order to demonstrate the power of integration, experts from various departments within our agency will serve as course instructors.
Additionally, we have decided to up the ante and will hopefully be constructing an additional, modern, architecturally significant, 50,000 square-foot creative facility adjoining our agency. For the next two years, we will be working with the City of Pasadena to make our design and architectural vision come to life. The addition will include offices for rent and an incubator space for outside companies, plus an art gallery, state-of-the-art kitchen and sound stage. If all goes according to plan, the building will showcase the best views of both Pasadena and the majestic San Gabriel mountains.
Over the years, we’ve worked hard at our craft while transforming our agency into an architecturally significant creative playground that reflects the passion and aesthetic sensibilities of the 110 amazing individuals from all parts of the world who currently comprise our staff.
As we ponder on the time we’ve spent here, we share in the excitement we feel about the promise of Pasadena as a center of continuing innovation. Just as some of the earliest settlers in Southern California chose this place to reinvent their lives, we at Ayzenberg Group have always felt the spirit of innovation here in Pasadena. We hope all the new pioneers who will be joining us here will share in our passion, but so far, it appears we are in good company.
About Ayzenberg Group
Founded in 1993, and now one of the ten largest privately held creative firms on the West Coast, Ayzenberg is a full-service advertising agency with a distinctly social and agile approach. We’re all about creating and sharing brand stories–in a real-time, always-on, multi-screen way. We have advertising, social media, digital, original content, media planning and implementation, analytics and more under one roof, working as one. From videogame to beverage and consumer electronic brands, our clients value how we target, convert and generate traction with today’s connected ‘Gen Now’ consumers. Current clients include Activision, EA, Microsoft, Red Bull, Sony, Mattel, Yahoo!, Disney, and Warner Bros.
