Former Omelet Studios chief Steven Amato announced a new business venture on Tuesday. The president and chief content officer of Omelet left the award-winning company he co-founded in 2004 to launch a new venture: Contend.
Amato is the founder, CEO and CCO of Contend, based out of downtown Los Angeles, with additional offices in Chicago. The new venture is described in a press release as “a collective of data driven content creators with a mission to innovate, disrupt and produce short and long format content for multiple distribution channels and networks.”
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The team consists of an executive team and 25 staffers coming from backgrounds including entertainment, marketing, advertising and publishing. The philosophy of the company is to create content with an end result.
“We intend to create content, both commercially driven and entertaining that is rooted in the understanding and knowledge of audience needs, based on real data driven research,” Amato said in a statement. “We are part consultancy, part production company and part content distributor, providing measurable results for brands and media partners.
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Amato is joined on the executive side by two former Omelet executives: Philip Alberstat; the former Omelet EVP takes the COO position at Contend; and Dane Aloe; from director of corporate development at Omelet to vice president, partnerships & innovation at Contend.
Rounding out the executive team are Chi-young Yoon as managing director, Evan Astrowsky as head of production, and Paul Soter as EVP, director of content. Yoon comes from a multicultural marketing background, having worked with major brands like Comcast, Energizer, Kellogg’s and Disney. Astrowsky has worked for Eli Roth and produced with Kevin Spacey at Trigger Street. Soter was a part of Broken Lizard (“Super Troopers”), and has developed television projects with a variety of cable and broadcast networks.
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During his long tenure at Omelet, Amato worked with such diverse clients as Sony, HBO, Microsoft, Wal-Mart and AT&T. More recently, he consulted with the White House and other government agencies on utilizing technology in job development and working toward the elimination of cyber-hacking.
Contend will primarily focus on creating integrated, multi-cultural marketing and entertainment content to engage audiences across all platforms. The company states that it specializes in ” creating, producing and distributing data-driven content to deliver measurable business results.”