Local company reaches far and wide

Published 8:00 pm Saturday, November 26, 2005

A South Whidbey-based communications company has developed award-winning products through a determination to go beyond the status quo.

Fusionspark Media integrates elements of writing, photography, video and audio, visuals and design to create one-of-a-kind Websites.

These elements — combined with a mission to inspire, inform, influence — has made Fusionspark stand out as more than your typical Web development company.

“We’re a multi-media communications company instead of quote-unquote Website developers,” Fusionspark Media CEO Russell Sparkman said. “We actually take pains to distinguish ourselves from companies that are Website development companies.”

Instead of creating a run-of-the-mill informational Website, Fusionspark projects capture the true essence of a subject and communicate that story to people all over the world.

“We believe passionately that the Internet is a place where you use inspiring storytelling as a way to reach the audience, as opposed to a pure corporate or non-profit boilerplate that bores people to death,” Sparkman said.

Fusionspark became an official company in 1999, but Sparkman has been working on projects that led to the company’s inception for more than a decade.

A progression toward Fusionspark Media was brought about by Sparkman’s early adaption to digital photography. After the release of the first Internet browser in 1994, Sparkman began to get opportunities related to photography and the Internet.

In 1997 and 1998 Sparkman was working for Epson, and they became a sponsor for a project called One World Journeys.

This award-winning Website features in-depth photo-documentary expeditions by a network of photographers, explorers and environmental educators about their connections to the natural world.

“One World Journeys was the project that gave birth to the company in 1999,” Sparkman said.

Sparkman and his counterparts knew they had to create online offerings that were both inspiring and engaging.

Fusionspark employees’ ability to hit this target with all of their projects has contributed to the company’s success.

They’ve aspired to create Internet-based projects with content that has the same emotional impact of quality television and radio programming, or magazine publications, for example.

“We could have had a lot more business and clients had we presented ourselves as a standard Web development company, churning out sort of cookie-cutter solutions to either corporate Websites or pretty standard e-commerce Websites,” Sparkman said.

“But we clung stubbornly to this vision of anything that we do has to have an inspiring or engaging storytelling aspect to it,” he said.

About 90 percent of Fusionspark projects have been related to the environment.

One of the best examples is a project the company completed with the Florida Department of Environmental Protection.

The department needed to communicate the importance of the freshwater springs system in Florida, and spread awareness to Floridians that activities taking place on the surface — such as putting fertilizer on the lawn or spilling oil on the driveway — eventually made its way into the source of their drinking water.

Sparkman said the Website content before Fusionspark was straightforward, unimaginative and largely ineffective.

“We had an opportunity to present another approach to telling this story,” Sparkman said. “To give them a way of communicating that would inspire people to love and appreciate the spring as a natural resource.”

Now about 10,000 people have visited the Website, and it has earned several awards.

Shortly after the site’s inception, the Florida Springs project won best online reporting from the Society of Environmental Journalists.

And Fusionspark’s latest addition to this site won a Silver Davey Award, which honors small companies for doing big things.

Fusionspark has completed 10 major projects and many smaller projects since their inception.

Most of their projects take six to nine months to complete.

“Each one of those is roughly equivalent to producing a mass coffee-table book combined with elements of TV and radio and Web developments as well,” Sparkman said.

Each project also includes the journalistic elements of gathering and reporting information.

In addition to their many nationwide projects, Fusionspark also works on local Websites.

The company is willing to do subcontractor work for local businesses. They are working with Island County Tourism to guide the group on how to better tell the story of Whidbey and Camano islands. And the company is early in the process of creating a new Website for Mukilteo Coffee.

Sparkman said they are working to bring Mukilteo Coffee’s site alive so it conveys the same effect that one might feel as they walk through the building’s doors. The site will include descriptions of tastes and smells, music and artwork.

“There’s a really unique story that nobody else has,” Sparkman said. “And we’ll figure out a way to convey that.”