Los AngelesEst. MMVI

Los Angeles · The Extraction Team · Est. MMVI

They don’t call us when it is going well.They call us when they need the extraction team.

It’s 8:47 PM on a Thursday night. A contract that expires in twenty-four hours. The room is Monday morning, and the agency responsible cannot deliver. This is when the extraction team is deployed.

IHow We Work

You will not hear“out of scope”from us.

Every company has an agency. We are the ones you call when that agency stops answering the phone.

Most firms will find the line in the contract that says your problem is not their problem. That is a fair reading of the contract. It is also the reason you are reading this page.

We work the other way. We read what you are actually dealing with, tell you what it will take, show you the route through it, and start. The room is Monday morning. That is the only fact that matters.

We are a creative agency and we are storytellers. The medium is whatever the story needs on the day. A website, a proposal, a building wrap, a film, a booth, a bottle, a uniform, a room. If it carries your name, it is in scope.

The work underneath all of it is the same: understand what is really going on, then tell it so the room believes it.

What you are buying is the ability to stop thinking about it.

Prestige over popularity

We build the thing your competitors start measuring themselves against.

Trend work looks dated in eighteen months.

Argued over before you see it

Every page gets challenged inside the studio first.

It has to survive the room it walks into.

The person who did the work answers

No account manager relaying messages.

You get the designer who built it, on the phone, at nine at night.

IIThe Extractions

What it looks like in practice.

Two real jobs. The names are withheld because that is the arrangement we offer every client. There is one of these most weeks.

Trade Show · Three Weeks Out

Their agency walked. The floor was already paid for.

A hundred thousand dollars of floor space bought, and nothing to put on it. No booth, no graphics, no printed material, no video, nothing to hand the people who stopped walking. Their agency had gone quiet after being paid.

We assessed it in a day and had a plan in two. Designers, printers, carpenters and a photographer were working on it that same week.

They walked the floor as though none of it had happened.

Pop-Up · Forty-Eight Hours

The space came through late. They had a location and a date.

Nothing else. No build, no signage, no fixtures, no packaging, and nobody booked to run the floor once it opened.

Forty-eight hours later it was designed, built, printed, delivered, installed, staffed and struck. Load-in through load-out.

One number to call the entire time.

We make miracles happen every day.

The 11th Hour

Twenty years · Los Angeles · On the clock

IIIThe Method

How an extraction runs.

The same five steps every time, whether you have six weeks or forty-eight hours.

We come in

No discovery phase measured in weeks.

We are reading your files the day you call.

We find the real problem

What is actually at stake, and who signs off on it.

Then the date the whole thing dies on.

You get the number and the date

What it costs, and what we need from you.

In writing, before anything starts.

We draw the path

The plan and the route to it, on paper.

Nobody on your side is left guessing.

We execute

Work starts that day.

Not after the next meeting scheduled to discuss the meeting.

IVThe Network

Thirty years of relationships.

Los Angeles has more design agencies than it needs, and most of them can make something beautiful given three weeks.

Forty-eight hours is a different problem. It is not solved by talent. It is solved by knowing which printer will run your job overnight, which carpenter will drive out on a Saturday, and which crew can be on site tomorrow morning.

We have been sending those people work since the nineties. They answer because of thirty years of the phone going both ways.

Every client we take on joins that network. We send them business and we call on them in return. When we put you in front of a fabricator, a photographer or a printer, it is because we built their brand and we know their work holds up.

That is the part a newer agency cannot hire, buy or copy. It is also why the timelines here are real.

Who We Put In The Field

Studio

  • Designers
  • Developers
  • Copywriters
  • Illustrators

Camera

  • Photographers
  • Videographers
  • Retouchers
  • Editors

Fabrication

  • Printers
  • Carpenters
  • Fabricators
  • Signage & Install

Production

  • Wardrobe & Custom Gear
  • Floral & Styling
  • Catering
  • Crew & Staffing

All of it reachable from one phone call. No second vendor to manage, no second markup, no introductions to make.

VWhat We Handle
I

Brand & Identity

Who you are, settled and written down, so nobody has to reinvent it on a deadline.

Identity · Naming · Guidelines

II

Presentations & Proposals

The document that decides it. Decks, RFP and SOQ responses, leasing studies, pro formas.

Decks · Proposals · Reports

III

Websites & Digital

Where people go to check whether you are real. Built to be used, not just looked at.

Web · Commerce · Product

IV

Environments & Signage

The brand in the physical world. Our own print and signage studio, from drawing to installation.

Wayfinding · Print · Packaging

V

Campaigns & Motion

The story with a camera on it. Photography direction, brand films, campaign creative.

Photo · Motion · Campaign

VI

Strategic Counsel

The call you make before you decide. It keeps going long after the files ship.

Direction · Counsel

VIThe Work

By Invitation

Client work is client privilege.

We do not publish our clients' work. Campaigns that have not run, buildings that have not opened, the deck that won a contract their competitor would like to read: none of it belongs on a public page, and a studio that posts it will post yours too.

What we show instead are case studies of capability. The same problems, the same dates, the same work, told without the name on them. Ask for a key and a butler will walk you through the ones that match your situation.

Request a key
The Studio · Selected Clients Since MMVI
HERBALIFE NUTRITION
NETFLIX
AUDI
PORSCHE
BMW
MERCEDES-BENZ
NIKE
UNDER ARMOUR
SPEEDO
FILA
LOS ANGELES GALAXY
JETBLUE
AIG
FARMERS INSURANCE
LOS ANGELES UNION STATION
METRO
UCLA
FACEBOOK
ONE HOPE WINE
BRENTWOOD HOME
NURSE JAMIE
JR286
AMERICAN RANGE
PHONEXA
FALLTECH
KING IRON WORKS
RYAN SAGHIAN
JOHN DOLMAYAN
EXCHANGE LA
ZERO PARALLEL
A&E STEEL
TORINO CREATIVE

Industries We Have Worked In

Commerce & Capital

  • Finance & Insurance
  • Legal
  • Real Estate
  • Technology

Motion & Industry

  • Automotive
  • Transportation
  • Construction
  • Manufacturing

Body & Brand

  • Beauty & Fashion
  • Health & Medical
  • Sports & Fitness
  • Luxury Goods

Table & Room

  • Food & Hospitality
  • Event Planning
  • Interiors
  • Floral

Culture & Public

  • Entertainment
  • Jewelry & Watches
  • Education
  • & Beyond
VIIThe Origin

Where The 11th Hour came from.

A client was forty-eight hours from losing the contract that carried their company. Not one project among many. The account that held everything together: the employees, the history, the reason the rest of the roster took their calls.

Five years were on the line, along with the growth that would have come with them. More than thirty employees did not know it yet.

They called at 8:47 PM on a Thursday night and said they needed a miracle. A forty-page proposal, a full RFP response, final and delivered by 8 AM Monday morning.

Monday morning they had their five-year extension.

That is where the name came from, and it is still the work. Names stay withheld until a client tells us otherwise.

VIIIThe Lineage

Nobody has seen Mr. Torino.

He built the studio in Los Angeles, spent twenty years making it able to handle whatever walked through the door, trained the people who would run it, and went off the grid. His butlers have seen him. That is the entire list.

The butlers are the extraction team. Ed Gabrielyan is his right hand and runs the floor. A butler does not ask why. He handles it before you have to explain it twice, and he never repeats what he heard in the room.

What Mr. Torino left behind was a standard. Dominate the work. Do good. Always. Values from the old country, which do not translate cleanly and do not need to.

We were taught not to break our word for anyone. We have not.

The Code

Always honest

You get the real number and the real date, including the days the news is bad.

Always respectful

Everybody in the room gets treated the same. The intern, the printer, the chairman.

Always professional

No drama, no excuses, and no surprises on the invoice.

Our word holds

We do not break it. Not for a bigger client, not for a better margin.

IXThe Usual Order

Most people call us second.

They price us first, underestimate our value, and go with the cheaper option.

Then the deck comes back wrong, the date moves up, and the cheaper option stops answering.

They come back, needing a miracle. They pay twice the amount. We get it done.

You are welcome to do it in that order. It is the scenic route, and you already knew that.

XContact

Tell us what you are up against.

It is free to talk to us. Ask questions, get guidance on what you are dealing with, and find out what is actually possible. We do not charge you to pick up at nine at night and talk you through it.

You do not know us yet, and we do not expect you to take our word for anything. Tell us exactly what is going on, including the awkward parts, and send the real dates and the real budget. There is almost always a solution.