(Photo: OKFocus)

The Merry Pranksters

From Old Spice’s viral “The Man Your Man Could Smell Like” campaign to the contentious Skittles spot that made One Million Moms cry bestiality, bizarre or aggressive advertising has become commonplace in our internet-addled society. To nab the attention of customers toggling between screens, advertisers frequently toe the line between inappropriate and outrageous, but few are as unabashedly controversial as the Queens-based OKFocus. Named to AdAge’s Creativity 50 in July, OKFocus is a rebel brand’s dream, equal parts design snob and attention-seeking internet troll. And as advertising moves online, OKFocus clients like Google and the Museum of Contemporary Art have taken note.

Helmed by Ryder Ripps, Jonathan Vingiano and Jules LaPlace, the boutique digital firm has implemented its fair share of next-gen, buzzy web products, including a live online dance party for Smirnoff and a game for Google Plus’s video-chat system that, using facial recognition technology, allows users to draw on the screen without using the mouse or keyboard.

The boundary-pushing agency is perhaps most notorious for its foray into pranksterism with WhoDat.Biz, a domain lookup site that purported to be the first company born of rapper Kanye West’s new startup, Donda Media. Users were shocked: did the stylish rapper just put out an ugly update of Whois.net? It took several hours before tech blogs realized that OKFocus was behind the viral prank. In one fell swoop, OKFocus called attention to the internet’s false preconceptions about Mr. West’s startup and demonstrated how dangerous the hive-mind can be when it latches onto bogus news, serving up a valuable lesson for brands and consumers alike.

What differentiates the agency’s aesthetic from others is its devotion to levity, to the idea that design can and should be fun. By mixing this philosophy with cutting-edge web technology, OKFocus creates products that stick in the minds of users long after they’ve moved onto the next big thing. As Mr. Vingiano put it in an interview with The Creator’s Project, “There’s something about this lack of humor in modern web design that is just so appalling.”

When OKFocus realized, for example, that New Yorkers frequently complain about unreliable L train service, they devised Is the L Train Fucked?, a single-serving website that flashes “yes” or “no” depending on the train’s status. By capitalizing on zeitgeist-y controversy and translating it in a humorous way, the trio behind OKFocus have established themselves as expert buzz-builders, unafraid of deploying a good stunt. As TV advertisers rush to out-weird themselves, OKFocus’s trolling instincts seem like the natural evolution of an industry obsessed with going viral.

Next: Dan Loeb, Third Point LLC: the Poison Pen

Back to the beginning

(Illustration: Robert Grossman)

Jack Dorsey, cofounder of Twitter and Square, recently tried to disabuse the tech industry of its infatuation with the word ‘disruption.’ “We don’t want ‘disruption,’ where we just move things around. We want a direction. We want a purpose,” he said on stage at TechCrunch Disrupt, humbly suggesting the biannual conference change its name. But it’s more than just semantics. The tech sector’s claim to produce world-changing products and services often gets drowned out in a chorus of me-too companies solving problems no one ever complained about. The umpteenth nightlife-recommendations tool or empty real-time dating app can obscure the whirr of a nascent robotics sector in Manhattan or a futuristic, even revolutionary, experiment in manufacturing in Queens.

However, there are insurgents in our midst, quietly pushing the city closer to Mayor Bloomberg’s goal of "reclaiming our title as the world capital of technological innovation." To identify those mindful mutineers, we tried to look beyond established leaders (see: Wilson, Fred) to the next class of innovators, who are forcing corporations to come to terms with the mobile revolution or shepherding startups toward making money without selling out. We found investors, developers, educators and agitators. We identified pioneering companies that set off the self-education craze (you’re welcome, Peter Thiel). We spotted a trio of provocateurs in Long Island City and an open-source radical on Roosevelt Island. Looking at this constellation of entrepreneurs, you can start to see the outline of New York’s tech future taking shape.

Valery Komissarova, Grishin Robotics: Rallying the Robots

Phineas Barnes, First Round Capital: the Bottom-Up Investor

Marleen Vogelaar, Shapeways: the Manufacturing Maven 

Anil Dash, Activate and ThinkUp: Amiable Agitator

Alex Taub and Michael Schonfeld, Dwolla: The Credit Card Killers

Mike Karnjanaprakorn, Skillshare: The Principal of New York

Rick Webb, Tumblr: The Undercover Ad Man

Deborah Estrin, CornellNYC Tech: the Entrepreneurial Egghead

Ryder Ripps, Jonathan Vingiano and Jules LaPlace, OKFocus: The Merry Pranksters

Daniel Loeb, Third Point LLC: the Poison Pen

This story appeared on the cover of the November 14, 2012 issue of The New York Observer. 

Mr. Vingiano and Mr. Ripps. (okfoc.us)

After some sleuthing, Betabeat discovered that WhoDat.biz is in fact a project of New York-based OkFocus, a full service digital agency run by Ryder Ripps and Jonathan Vingiano that's notorious for their PR stunts.

Mr. Vingiano confirmed to us over email that WhoDat.biz is "an OKFocus project."

We reached out to Small Girls PR, friends of OKFocus, and asked about the project.

"Way to punk the entire Internet, Mr. Vingiano!" we said.

"Yeah, he's very good at that," they responded. "He used to run a @Balenciaga twitter in which the L was actually an upercase i ... rihanna retweeted it."

OKFocus is also behind Is the L Train Fucked? and Dump.fm.

When we reached out to the fake Donda Media address, they originally responded with AIM slang--"a/s/l?" After some back and forth, we finally laid it on the line: "C'mon, Ryder," we wrote. "It will feel so good to be honest. And then you can get press for OkFocus while everyone still cares! This WSJ article obviously didn't do you justice."

The folks at OKFocus responded, "Hehe. Yes it's an OkFocus project." Mr. Ripps even duped his friends, posting a link to WhoDat.Biz on his Facebook page 18 hours ago, along with the following commentary:

Since everyone was fooled, we'll take it upon ourselves to dish out some grades on how long it took various sites to realize the whole thing was a hoax.

The Washington Post: F
Headline: Kanye West’s Donda Media unveils Whodat.biz, the ‘Facebook of Websites’
Time posted: 4:09 p.m. EST
Time redacted: Not yet (as of 7:03 p.m.)

Gizmodo: B
Headline: What the Hell is Kanye's Insane Tech Start Up? updated to This Can't Possibly Be Kanye's Insane Tech Start Up, Can It?
Time posted: 2:53 p.m.
Time redacted: 5:30 p.m. (That New "Donda Media" Site Is Fake As Hell (Updated))

Buzzfeed: B
Headline: Kanye's New Startup is Ridiculous
Time posted: 2pm-ish
Time redacted: 3:47pm (via a tweet and an update: Kanye's New Startup Is Ridiculous (Update: And Fake))

Betabeat: B, because it took a helpful tweet sent just after our original post to cue us in. Also, apparently everyone in New York knew; we were told we "need more Facebook friends."
Headline: Introducing Kanye West’s Bizarre New Startup, WhoDat.Biz
Time posted: 4:10 p.m. (but updated at 4:15 p.m. to Introducing Kanye West’s Possibly Fake But Definitely Bizarre New Startup, WhoDat.Biz [UPDATED])
Time redacted: 5:35 p.m. (Fake Kanye Site Punks Internet, 30 Minutes Later Internet Debunks Fake Kanye Site) and 6:13 p.m. (Meet OKFocus, the PR Stuntmen Behind Fake Kanye West Site WhoDat.biz)

PopDust: A, for being skeptical from the start.