We are the digital agency
crafting brand experiences
for the modern audience.
We are Fame Foundry.

See our work. Read the Fame Foundry magazine.

We love our clients.

Fame Foundry seeks out bold brands that wish to engage their public in sincere, evocative ways.


WorkWeb DesignSportsEvents

Platforms for racing in the 21st century.

Fame Foundry puts the racing experience in front of millions of fans, steering motorsports to the modern age.

“Fame Foundry created something never seen before, allowing members to interact in new ways and providing them a central location to call their own. It also provides more value to our sponsors than we have ever had before.”

—Ryan Newman

Technology on the track.

Providing more than just web software, our management systems enhance and reinforce a variety of services by different racing organizations which work to evolve the speed, efficiency, and safety measures, aiding their process from lab to checkered flag.

WorkWeb DesignRetail

Setting the pace across 44 states.

With over 1100 locations, thousands of products, and millions of transactions, Shoe Show creates a substantial retail footprint in shoe sales.

The sole of superior choice.

With over 1100 locations, thousands of products, and millions of transactions, Shoe Show creates a substantial retail footprint in shoe sales.

WorkWeb DesignRetail

The contemporary online pharmacy.

Medichest sets a new standard, bringing the boutique experience to the drug store.

Integrated & Automated Marketing System

All the extensive opportunities for public engagement are made easily definable and effortlessly automated.

Scheduled promotions, sales, and campaigns, all precisely targeted for specific demographics within the whole of the Medichest audience.

WorkWeb DesignSocial

Home Design & Decor Magazine offers readers superior content on designer home trends on any device.


  • By selectively curating the very best from their individual markets, each localized catalog comes to exhibit the trending, pertinent visual flavors specific to each region.


  • Beside the swaths of inspirational home photography spreads, Home Design & Decor provides exhaustive articles and advice by proven professionals in home design.


  • The art of home ingenuity always dances between the timeless and the experimental. The very best in these intersecting principles offer consistent sources of modern innovation.

WorkWeb DesignSocial

  • Post a need on behalf of yourself, a family member or your community group, whether you need volunteers or funds to support your cause.


  • Search by location, expertise and date, and connect with people in your very own community who need your time and talents.


  • Start your own Neighborhood or Group Page and create a virtual hub where you can connect and converse about the things that matter most to you.

June 2021
Noted By Joe Bauldoff

The Making and Maintenance of our Open Source Infrastructure

In this video, Nadia Eghbal, author of “Working in Public”, discusses the potential of open source developer communities, and looks for ways to reframe the significance of software stewardship in light of how the march of time constantly and inevitably works to pull these valuable resources back into entropy and obsolescence. Presented by the Long Now Foundation.
Watch on YouTube

065 - Tribes in today's marketing: New types of tribes

Social media has changed the ways in which tribes make connections, take shape and share information. Find out what this means

March 2021
Noted By Joe Bauldoff

The Case for Object-Centered Sociality

In what might be the inceptive, albeit older article on the subject, Finnish entrepreneur and sociologist, Jyri Engeström, introduces the theory of object-centered sociality: how “objects of affinity” are what truly bring people to connect. What lies between the lines here, however, is a budding perspective regarding how organizations might better propagate their ideas by shaping them as or attaching them to attractive, memorable social objects.
Read the Article

February 2021
Noted By Joe Bauldoff

Has the Pandemic Transformed the Office Forever?

In what feels like the universe's own swinging the pendulum back from the trend of the open floor plan, the corporate world has been forced to use the COVID-19 pandemic as opportunity for workspace experimentation, perhaps in ways that will outlast any stay-at-home order.
Read the Article

December 2010
By Jeremy Hunt

Jumping Into Jumo

Can social media change the world?
Read the article

Jumping Into Jumo

jumo_article

New social media platforms seem to crop up and die out (or get bought out) with regularity in this day and age. Whereas the social media map used to consist primarily of MySpace and Facebook (and Friendster if we’re feeling generous), now there's Twitter, YouTube, LinkedIn, Tumblr and Wikipedia, just to name a few. With stories of upstarts like FriendFeed or Lala getting swallowed up by the big guns in the business, it’s a landscape that’s constantly changing.

But the great thing about this open environment is that it isn’t a zero-sum game, as Facebook’s Mark Zuckerburg put it at the Web 2.0 Summit 2010 a couple of weeks ago. As a result, while it’s a noisy scene, the best “artists” making the best “music” rise to the top and get noticed.

The newest kid on the block

Which brings us to Jumo. The latest project from Facebook co-founder Chris Hughes, Jumo is a new attempt to merge the burgeoning movement for social change with the power of social networking itself.

While social change and humanitarian efforts have existed in many formats (with varying degrees of success) on the Web, Jumo’s concept is centered upon fostering a deeper interaction with issues and causes. By focusing on the heart of what drives people to get involved in generous giving and living, Jumo is banking on helping charities and nonprofits connect with potential supporters.

The point of connection is not the “ask,” whereby a nonprofit initiates their relationship with you by requesting a donation. No, Jumo takes a few steps back to first ask, “What is it that you’re passionate about?”. From there, the site connects you with organizations that are working in related fields.

In other words, the relationship that you develop with a charity begins organically with a question of the heart, not a question of the wallet. The end result – financial support – might not be that dissimilar, but the means are profoundly different. Jumo's approach could mean the difference between creating a one-time giver and inspiring a life-long supporter who not only gives but actively recruits others to join the cause through their heartfelt passion.

Why Jumo matters

What does this mean to you as an online citizen?

The Jumo model is important because there are lessons from this approach that apply to us all. Whether you’re running a business or a charity, your interactions – both online and in-person – with your clients are what ultimately drive the machine. You might have the coolest product or the most moving cause in the world, but if you’re not taking care of your customers or donors, you won’t last long.

While on one hand, social media has made it easier to keep people at arms-length behind the safety of a computer screen, it’s also helped to remind us all of what’s important in the social realm: relationships. Without them, you’re sunk.

The nuts and bolts

So how does it all work? It’s quite simple, really.

Step one is signing up for an account, which unsurprisingly starts with a prompt to connect to your Facebook account.

jumo_homepage

Next you create your profile, with Jumo pulling in your profile picture and basic personal information from Facebook. From there, you review a list of core issues and causes, including poverty, peace and governance and human rights. Each topic leads you further down a path of discovery that ultimately ends in a list of specific organizations that are doing work in the fields that you’ve selected.

Once this process is complete, your Jumo home page will be generated. This page features an aggregated news feed from the projects that you have chosen to follow. You’ll also have a sidebar with suggested projects and issues that might interest you as well as a “Talk” column that reflects updates from all projects, issues and people with whom you’re connected.

If all of this sounds familiar, that’s because it is. The format and terminology will be second nature to anyone who’s already on Facebook and Twitter. That familiarity should be a strength for Jumo moving forward, as it makes the new environment easy to get used to.

It’s also fairly easy to add a new organization or project on Jumo; the key is that you must have a valid Employer Identification Number (EIN) as a 501(c)(3) nonprofit entity. Beyond that, it’s a simple process of plugging in basic information such as your organization's mission and links to your website.

Again, Jumo presumes that your organization has already established a Facebook Page, as it will ask for your Facebook ID number to pull a profile picture in for your new project. From there, it’s up to you to connect with individual users on Jumo, though the platform aids the process by allowing you to select the same topics of interest of as an individual, only this time the selections will help to define what your project is.

A step in the right direction

Only time will tell if Jumo will actually reach the lofty goals that its creators have set forth, but it so far it seems to be off to a promising start.

The interface is easy to navigate, but the site has been plagued by performance issues due to an overwhelming amount of traffic in its first few days of beta launch. The team is working to alleviate those problems, and hopefully, once fully launched, any minor issues will be resolved so that users can get down to the business of changing the world.


July 2010
By The Author

We the Media

Fame Foundry shares our first-hand perspective on the iPhone 4 and PR in the Digital Age.
Read the article

We the Media

fuse

Even before the first iPhone 4 left stores, and even as customers were enduring all manner of conditions while waiting in line for a chance to get their hands on Apple’s latest mobile phenomenon, the Web was already ablaze with reports about a possible design flaw in the wrap-around antenna that interferes with reception.

The story begins on the afternoon of June 23, when Fame Foundry started a discussion thread on the MacRumors community forum about a problem we encountered straight out of the box. Among the lucky 600,000 to successfully pre-order the highly sought-after device on June 15, we shot and posted this video to demonstrate the issue we had discovered:

In just over 24 hours since, the conversation in the discussion thread has continued across 46 pages, as other users have chimed in with their own theories, reviews, experiments and videos.

More significantly, the story of the apparent operating glitch has taken on a life of its own, leaping from the obscure fanboy territory of the MacRumors forum and ascending to the upper echelons of media.

The first to pick it up were tech blogs like Gizmodo, Mashable and Engadget. Soon after mainstream outlets including The StreetMSNBC and CNN followed suit. By the afternoon of June 24, Fame Foundry was fielding phone calls from reporters from national media organizations, all tracing back to the original YouTube video, which has received more than 400,000 views at the time of this posting.

The launch of the iPhone 4 has been a remarkable case study in the nature of today’s media and the ways and speed at which information spreads.

When photos and videos of a still-in-development iPhone 4 were published on Gizmodo, the story of how the device escaped the grasp of Apple’s famously impenetrable security and landed in the hands of a tech blogger became a much bigger story than the gadget’s shiny new design.

The launch of the iPhone 4 has been a remarkable case study in the nature of today’s media and the ways and speed at which information spreads.When the time arrived for the official announcement on June 7, Steve Jobs proved that the leaked photos had hardly stolen the device’s thunder, as he proudly introduced groundbreaking features such as video calling, 960-by-640 resolution display and high definition video recording. However, it is likewise worth noting that there were so many bloggers in attendance reporting live from the WWDC keynote event that a network overload brought Jobs’ product demonstration to a temporary standstill.

The hype surrounding iPhone 4 hit fever pitch on the first day of pre-orders. Apple racked up record-breaking sales, but this success story shared the headlines with the technical difficulties caused by the massive influx of traffic hitting their website, propelled largely by vocal frustrated customers who spent hours trying in vain to place their orders.

Returning to the events of the past two days, if a similar problem had occurred even just a few years ago, it would have taken much longer to come to light. In the absence of the instant connectivity of social media platforms and fan forums, users who encountered a reception issue might have assumed it was an isolated problem or that their particular device was defective, and Apple's customer service department would have been the only channel through which they could address their concerns.

By contrast, within hours of the first video being posted, there were legions of interconnected customers, bloggers and media outlets on the case, executing their own tests and drawing their own conclusions.

Interestingly, as of the time of this posting, the only response from Apple has come in an e-mail exchange between Steve Jobs and an iPhone 4 user (via MacRumors), in which Jobs describes the problem as a “Non issue. Just avoid holding it that way.”

Later, Jobs elaborated further on his position in a follow-up message:

Gripping any phone will result in some attenuation of its antenna performance, with certain places being worse than others depending on the placement of the antennas. This is a fact of life for every wireless phone. If you ever experience this on your iPhone 4, avoid gripping it in the lower left corner in a way that covers both sides of the black strip in the metal band, or simply use one of many available cases.

And so begins the next chapter in the iPhone 4 saga. Not surprisingly, this response is already showing up on blogs across the Internet, spreading just as quickly as the initial complaints.

Such is the nature of PR in today's 24-hour, on-demand information free-for-all. A single user-generated video becomes a viral sensation that far outshines the typical puff piece stories on how many people are eagerly waiting in line to buy the next great thing. Consumer backlash starts with a groundswell that becomes a tidal wave. A few brief sentences in an e-mail from one of the world’s most powerful CEOs stands in lieu of a carefully crafted press release as the company’s official statement. There is constant push and pull as corporate entities like Apple attempt to steer public sentiment in their favor – a delicate balancing act that requires juggling the mainstream press, the blogger nation and the average consumer with a Facebook or Twitter account.

As the course of events surrounding the iPhone 4 launch demonstrates, no one is safe when there is a potential reporter behind every keyboard and every camera phone – not even Apple with its notoriously loyal fan base.

More...

June 26

Test Shows iPhone Antenna Issue Impacts Voice Transmission Too [Gizmodo]

June 29

Leaked: Apple's Internal iPhone 4 Antenna Troubleshooting Procedures [Boy Genius Report]

June 30

First iPhone 4 Class Action Suit Filed Against Apple and AT&T [Gizmodo]

July 2

Letter from Apple Regarding iPhone 4 [Apple]

Apple "Stunned" to Find iPhones Show Too Many Bars [AP]

Class Action Lawyers Predictably Unimpressed with Apple's Statement [TechCrunch]

July 5

Apple Waiving 10% Restocking Fee for Returned iPhones [IntoMobile]

July 6

AppleCare: The iPhone Update Won't Solve the Antenna Problem [Gizmodo]

The iPhone is Ruining My Life! [Aol Small Business]

July 7

iPhone 4 Complaints Mounting: A Rocky Rollout [CIO]

iPhone 4: Officially a Hot Mess [Inc.]

July 12

Apple Deleting Mentions of Consumer Reports' iPhone 4 Piece on Forums, Can't Delete Your Thoughts [Engadget]

PR Experts: iPhone 4 Hardware Recall Is "Inevitable" [Cult of Mac]

July 13

iPhone Antenna Outcry Escalates with Recall Demand [MSNBC]

July 14

What Apple Must Do to Stop the Bleeding [Mashable]

Microsoft Exec Mocks iPhone 4, Dubs it Apple's Vista [Computerworld]

Video: Does iOS 4.1 Fix the iPhone 4's Death Grip Antenna Issue? [TechCrunch]

Every Week Apple Doesn't Act on iPhone 4 Antenna Could Cost $200M [AppleInsider]

Report: Apple Holding Friday Press Conference on iPhone 4 [PC Magazine]

July 15

Apple Engineer Told Jobs iPhone Antenna Might Cut Calls [Bloomberg]

New York Senator Charles Schumer Writes Open Letter to Steve Jobs [Boy Genius Report]

iPhone 4 Signal Issue Can Be Fixed With a Software Update? [MacRumors]

July 16

Live from Apple's iPhone 4 Phone Conference [Engadget]

Apple's "Antennagate" Mea Culpa – Free Case Until September 30 [ZDNet]

A Defiant Steve Jobs Confronts "Antennagate" [The Wall Street Journal]

Jobs Calls Bloomberg Antenna Article a "Total Crock" [MacNN]

July 17

Apple's Claims About Other Phones – There's a Response For That [The Wall Street Journal]

July 18

iPhone Defense Prompts New Debate [The Wall Street Journal]

July 19

"Antennagate" Reactions: RIM, Nokia, Taiwanese Animation [MacRumors]

HTC, Samsung Rebut Apple's Smartphone Claims [The Wall Street Journal]

Steve Jobs's Disastrous iPhone 4 Press Conference [Harvard Business Review]