Browsing By Design

Coffee with Kwame Kilpatrick! Well, not quite. Yet it's still possible to drink with hizzoner. All you need is a mug with the former mayor's mug.

Jason Schultz, 30, co-owner and co-founder of Ohm Creative Group, the Royal Oak-based agency behind the Kwame mug, recalls, "When we launched it we knew that … Detroit was going to get a lot of bad press and we wanted to create an environment where we could have a little bit of fun with it and talk about it and blog about it. …We were the first people to put his mug shot on a mug."

First; and fast. Within 24 hours of the ex-mayor's arraignment last March, Ohm had commemorative mugs and T-shirts for sale online.

But the two-year-old creative marketing agency is known for more than just clever cups. It specializes in Internet marketing campaigns and documentary-style video production, among other services. Prior to founding Ohm, Schultz worked with his partner and co-founder, Jesse Cory, 31, for several years on marketing videos. Cory, a cameraman by trade, gained experience on VH1 projects and the documentary film, Capturing the Friedmans while living in New York City. He filmed in Detroit, too, as a photojournalist at WDIV.

In 2006, Cory says, he and Schultz realized "the Internet was there for the taking for us. There was so much potential there that we just started to migrate our business to the web." They supplied the start-up with their own funds and connections. Cory brought equipment dollars and relationships with Detroit's media community, while Schultz, a graduate of the University of Michigan's film and video studies program, had clients from his four-year-old company, Faceman Productions, known for its camera and DVD work for bands.

A gallery of creative marketing

"Last year," Schultz says, "we were in my living room in Hamtramck with three computers. I had Dutch doors that divided our office from where I watched movies." Finally, in January the partners moved from living room to showroom at 323 East 4th Street in Royal Oak. In April, they opened the eclectic 323 East art boutique, which shares space with Ohm's office.

Cory says that from 2007 to 2008, sales grew six-fold. Producer credits, in addition to Cory and Schultz, also go to Mike MacKool, Dan Armand, Ernie Guerra, and Shane Beliveau. Sitting in his vibrant green and brown walled office, Cory says, "We had a huge explosion when we moved in here. Having a physical location with an avenue to the public has allowed us to really kind of grow at a rapid rate, even in a down economy."

All business stems from word of mouth, Schultz says. Ohm's clients span the country, but most are in Oakland County – including Hansons, the large home improvement contractor famous for its television ads; and now, for web pitches. Ohm built the successful Hansons "Sing-A-Jing" online video contest, an example of Web 2.0 user-generated content, and also wrote and produced the television spot advertising the contest. Additionally, as part of making product videos for the company's website, Ohm developed "Mohments" – a flash video spokesperson that greets visitors to a website.

Schultz explains, "Nowadays, with the web being a viable platform for operating your business, it doesn't make sense to just have it as a destination for people to go to learn. You should make it a destination where they can go and interact with that [business]." Accordingly, Ohm can provide clients with data about visitors to their websites.

So successful was the Internet marketing program, Cory and Schultz recently attended the Home Improvement Management Summit, a gathering of 40 of the largest home improvement companies in the country, to discuss their work for Hansons on the web. The firm's work has garnered prospective interest from other major industry players, Schultz says.

For another client, rap and heavy metal group Critical Bill, Ohm produced a DVD, a music video, and prime PR. To create a public stir for the video release, the firm filmed a hoax video and placed it on You Tube.

"The hoax video got everybody all hot and bothered about the video – like … I can't believe they're doing this! Those are the kinds of things we like doing for bands. We don't want to just make someone's video; we want to make something that makes a buzz for the music video," Cory explains. Critical Bill got the bang it wanted from the buzz – its video spread virally to the Suicide Girls MySpace page.  "I've worked in mass media for several years and to make something sticky catch on there has to be multiple factors to it, multiple layers," he continues. "You know, you can't just write a story about Ohm Creative Group and what we're doing on the web. Big deal, who's not doing that? We're selling mugs!" he laughs.

Video art to fine art

Those mugs are available online and on the shelf at 323 East, the storefront with a tropical green facade. Mike MacKool, 24, who co-owns the gallery with Schultz, Cory, and Armand, serves as full-time staffer and collection curator. MacKool has an eye for primary colors; he's dabbled in photography and headed the kitchens at Vicente's Cuban Cuisine and the Buzz Bar.

The gallery launched with an array of 30 artists, but now houses 90, most of whom call "the D" home. Works by painter Peter DeAngelo, stencil artist and metal sculptor Chris Turner, and clothing designer Angela McBride reside in its rainbow of paintings, sketches, sculpture, clothing, jewelry, and toys.

The artistic mediums are "limitless", giving the boutique a unique cache. "No one has as a wide spectrum as we do," MacKool says. "As far as our selection of different types of art, at any given time we can have 10 different styles in here."

Most galleries offer just a paltry palette of artists each month. "If an artist goes up for a month, you've got to wait six months to get into a show and then you have to have 20 to 30 pieces," he points out. "Here, since I have so many [artists] you don't have to work out a whole show. You can bring me work as you make it."

This philosophy explains the shop's singular feel. You're not buying number 788 out of 1,500 prints at 323 East. From dwellers decking out walls to skateboarders looking to flaunt hand-painted decks, everyone will find original, affordable, objets d'art.

"We still want people to be able to walk out with something," MacKool says. Items range from a $5,000 mosaic guitar showpiece by Los Angeles-based artist Tiffany Miller to $3 Michigan mitten felt pins, but many are priced around $50, including works by Kill Taupe, the boutique's best-selling artist. He paints a circus of creatures, many bearing food or battle scars. Look for chuckling cupcakes, belligerent broccoli … and just about anything else you could – or couldn't – imagine.

Snazzy T-shirts for men and togs for women and kids dangle from bronze plumbing pipes. And hail to Halloween! There hangs a little black velvet dress, its flared silver skirt alive with arching black cats.

Always, too, there are renderings of the inconceivable: Chewbaccsicles.  These hybrid popsicle-Chewbaccas don't melt. And they can't be bought by the box, either. Available in plastic and bronze, these fantasies on sticks are molded by local artist Graem Whyte. Another of his pieces, the striking "Saw Tooth", a hand saw grinning with a mouthful of teeth, gleefully garnishes the wall.

Says MacKool, "It's something that I think all of us have personally aspired to eventually have, some sort of storefront or gallery or creative means of connecting with the public, something that brings you out there and out front." So, whether on a television screen or computer screen or silkscreen, Ohm Creative Group and 323 East have quite a display on show.