Fuel Digital Marketing & Branding and Mediasation merged last week under Fuel’s name, the company announced Friday. The two companies had previously occupied different camps in the branding and advertising industry. Mediasation had a large foothold in Web-based technologies while Fuel specialized in creative services for mainly high-end real estate clients almost exclusively in the Upstate.
The new entity is set to take over the 8,000-square-foot Court Street space now occupied by Devereaux’s restaurant, said Charles Carter, partner and chief marketing officer.
The restaurant is set to move out in November, and then Fuel will move in and open after a one-month renovation process. Before then, several people will move from the Fuel office into the Mediasation office now on the third floor of that same building. Carter said that when a previous prospect had turned down the space, his company expressed interest.
The resulting company would be worth about $5-6 million, with more than 30 staff, said chief communications officer Bill Donohue. Mediasation managed about 750 websites for clients in the Southeast, primarily in South Carolina.
Donohue said Fuel had worked with other partners over the years, but this was the first that brought a very different skill set. Carter said Fuel filled a gap in Mediasation’s services as well.
“For the first six years and 300 clients, we didn’t have a marketing director,” he said. He said the company had previously been limited to operating at whatever level each customer was able to handle, but the addition of a large creative team would allow it to increase clients’ sophistication over time.
At the same time, Mediasation’s technological capabilities would help to measure Fuel’s creative efforts more precisely, Donohue said. It had provided services including search engine optimization, proprietary CMS software systems, lead nurturing and database marketing.
Both companies had taken significant hits during the recession. Fuel’s clients have included Cox Lumber, Home Depot, and Greenville’s Two Chefs restaurants. Fuel’s reliance on a real estate-driven client base brought a rapid decline during the recession. Fuel went from a $4 million company with more than 30 employees in 2004 to just two employees for a time. Eventually, it was the return of the real estate market that brought the company back.
“We don’t do anything on credit anymore, I’ll tell you that,” Donohue said.
Mediasation responded to the recession by offering inexpensive starter websites for small businesses. The product helped the company survive through a difficult time, but today that is only a small part of the business, said Ryan Beck, president and CFO, formerly president and senior designer at Mediasation.
He said that by the time of the merger, the company was more than 95 percent focused on custom work, noting that Mediasation recently completed a large project for the MGM Grand in Vietnam.
The companies agreed to merge under the Fuel name, preferring the more dynamic connotation that name offered. They kept Mediasation’s green-and-black color scheme in response to a surprisingly strong show of brand loyalty among Mediasation staff, Carter said.
