SAN FRANCISCO, CA -- (MARKET WIRE) -- 09/17/07 -- John Durham and Cory Treffiletti, two well known and highly regarded online advertising industry executives, have partnered to launch Catalyst (www.catalystsf.com), which will help companies of all sizes develop and implement emerging digital media strategies resulting in the most effective, most efficient and most direct means of conveying marketing messages to target audiences.

"Our primary mission will be to drive measurable results and impact client business growth by acting as a catalyst between emerging technology companies, publishers and brand marketers facilitating the integration of paid media, non-paid media and emerging media," says Mr. Treffiletti, who will serve as Catalyst's President, Managing Partner.

"Catalyst will help clients combine selling a product or service (Marketing) with sources of profit or benefit vs. the competition (Capital) to produce ideas, intelligence and insights that achieve an advantage in the areas of marketing, sales or consumer insights, thus 'Marketing Capital,'" says Mr. Durham, the firm's CEO, Managing Partner. "Our clients will include early stage start-ups looking for a clear, implementable strategy for growth in a competitive marketplace; marketers with multiple agencies which lack a single, clarified strategy for integrating their projects together; and agencies focused on paid media, but want to learn more about digital media."

At launch Catalyst, which is based in San Francisco, is working on a number of businesses including Jitter Fingers, an emerging social media tool for teen and tween girls, and Zude, an emerging social computing platform touted as the fastest, easiest way to build and manage a website.

Mr. Treffiletti and Mr. Durham together have nearly 40 years of marketing and sales experience, much of it in the digital media industry. Mr. Treffiletti had served as SVP, Engagement Architect for Carat Fusion; SVP, Managing Director for Carat Interactive; Media Director and VP Media Services for Freestyle Interactive; Director of Marketing for IUMA and was a founding member of i-traffic in 1996, and its VP of Client Services. Mr. Treffiletti is also a weekly Online SPIN columnist for MediaPost and writes a daily blog at http://onlineadvertising.about.com.

Mr. Durham previously served as President of Sales & Marketing for Jumpstart Automotive Media; SVP, Business Development for Carat Fusion; President, Founder of Pericles Consulting; President, Winstar Interactive Media and spent a number of years in the local television business. Mr. Durham is a Founder and Co-Chairman of BIG, The Bay Area Interactive Group and is a Professor of Marketing at the University of San Francisco.

Catalyst will bring in experienced specialists in a variety of disciplines including media, advertising, promotion, analytics and public relations on a client-need basis. Among the first to be tapped is Eric Yang, who will be the firm's Operations Partner. Mr. Yang is also CEO of Black Bag Advertising, a San Francisco agency with $35 million in billings in 2006. Black Bag offers media planning and buying services for those clients who are in need of an outsourced solution and partners with Catalyst to work together to develop and execute media and marketing strategies as a holistic solution.

"Catalyst can be an outsourced executive marketing team for start-ups and businesses looking to get to the next level of effective marketing," says Mr. Treffiletti. "The fragmentation of the audience has resulted in an environment where 'traditional' marketing efforts are becoming less effective and are no longer the only means of reaching an audience. Paid media can only go so far to reach your target, and marketers need to find more innovative ways to speak to their audience. There is a gap in the marketplace for helping marketers utilize emerging media and integrate them into their standard opportunities to reach their objectives. We will fill that gap. We will also work with emerging digital media looking to build audience quickly but lack relationships and funding to do it in an effective manner."

Catalyst's services include:

Supplementing the traditional paid and non-paid media aspects of marketing with an integrated strategy and working in tandem with the agencies who are handling the base elements of the marketing opportunity.

Taking the "buy or build" question facing publishers, match the needs with emerging media and the needs of marketers to satisfy both.

Develop tools for creating an automated marketplace for matching new emerging technologies with the needs of marketers and we close these relationships.

"We are a company that can provide a source of profit, advantage, and power, in the form of strategy or assets, to benefit the total of activities involved in the transfer of goods from the producer or seller to the consumer or buyer," says Mr. Durham.

Individual Digital Photos of Mr. Treffiletti and Mr. Durham available on Request.

George H. Simpson
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