Ink Foundry - Social Media Marketing and Word of Mouth Marketing

Meet Your New Agency

Ink Foundry has a diverse roster of clients from really cool start ups to Fortune 500 brands in hospitality, beer, wine and spirits, travel, restaurants, live entertainment, automotive, beauty, health and wellness.

Our services include a full suite of social media marketing solutions, word of mouth marketing and public relations. We are especially proud of our social media employee training program and our Social Media Go! Twitter, Facebook and blog development modules.

We take great pride in finding the right solution for your business, even if it means referring you to another agency.

You can also find out more about us on Facebook at our Social Media Go! page and on Twitter either at @InkFoundry, @SocialMediaGo or @InkFoodie.

Quick Overview

Since Ink Foundry began in 1999, we have worked with both large and small companies. We do not have a minimum financial requirement and we chose clients based on our ability to meet their goals, our skill set, passion for their product and our availability.

If we don’t think we can help you or we don’t have the bandwidth, we’ll refer you to someone else. Making sure that the chemistry is right between an agency and a brand is equally important as matching skills with needs.

One of our greatest achievements is our ability to develop long term relationships with our clients. Our first client in 1999, is still our client today.

Origin of The Name

There was this really cool company named Sonic Foundry that had awesome advertising. And I loved the name “foundry.” It sounded hard working. Something that I’ve learned from experience is that no matter how talented you may be or fantastic a product you’ve made or service provided, hard work trumps talent every day. It’s a lesson at Ink Foundry that we live and breathe every day. We have great experience with major Fortune 500 brands such as Hilton Hotels and the name had to reflect our hard working solid corporate roots, but we also come up with these crazy ideas, so we needed the name to also balance out the corporate side with a playful and creative twist.

In the public relations industry, the term “Ink” is a broad term used to describe press coverage. I thought that “Ink” was a great way to express our less than conventional side.

Arnold Ontes, a brilliant artist, was instrumental in not only developing the logo, but leading us through the naming process. He really challenged us to come up with an appropriate name that represented our service proposition.

It took nearly nine months to develop the name and brand package, but every time we hand our card to someone, and they stare at it a little longer than average, we know all of that time and effort paid off.

Group 22, a super talented design shop, recently updated the logo for us to better accommodate the opening of our second office in San Francisco. I love it! - Carin Galletta

Funny Story On Ink Foundry’s Beginnings

Ink Foundry started on a whim because I really wanted to work on a project that had come to the agency I was working for, but the agency turned it down because the budget was under its minimum monthly financial requirement at the time.

I informed both the potential client, Ogden Entertainment, and my agency at the time that I wanted to pitch the business. Both agreed. I was all by myself and pitching against some major players in the marketing industry. In the middle of my pitch, Jack Lindquist, the former president of Disneyland, thanked me and walked out the door. I was devastated. Thankfully, his partner, Jim Garber, was kind enough to sit through what I imagined was the worst pitch they had ever heard. At the end, I thanked him profusely, thinking he must be the most patient, nicest man ever to sit through my presentation.

Turns out Jack had a tee time at his local golf course. And he’d made up his mind about me. They gave me the business two agonizingly long days later. And it turns out, Jim Garber is indeed one of the kindest men I’ve ever met. They still refer business to us today, more than ten years later. - Carin

Who Owns Ink Foundry?

With two offices in California; our original in Los Angeles and our recently (2008) opened second office in San Francisco; we are independently owned. Which means that we are not beholden to a board of directors sitting thousands of miles away pushing us to cut costs and your service to make their bottom line.

Carin Galletta started the company in her guest cottage in Long Beach, California in 1999.

PHOTO CREDIT: Steven Snodgrass