Bien logic

Bien Logic, Inc. was one of the first interactive marketing agency based in San Diego, California. In the mid-1990's it was also the largest such company. It pioneered several innovations in web development and internet software industry. Throughout the years 1993 to 1997, over 80 professionals worked at Bien Logic in San Diego, Orange County and Los Angeles. Many of these designers, programmers, account and sales executives, managers went on to start other companies that continue to exist and thrive today, especially SiteLab and Netrics.

Early Years: 1993-1994

Bien Logic was founded in February 1993 by Frederic Bien in collaboration with Michel Delory, George Geller and Dina Tsoukas. Peter Yianilos was the first angel investor in the company. The initial plan was to create educational software for handheld digital books and personal digital assistants. Bien Logic delivered two prototype products: MatchCoach (for Simon & Schuster and Franklin Electronic Publishers's eBook [http://www.franklin.com] ) and SpanishCoach (for Apple Newton [http://www.apple.com] ). Faced with the low consumer adoption of these early digital books, Bien Logic changed direction in 1994, and started developing websites and interactive marketing programs for various clients.

Web Development 1994-1997

First commercial success was the launch of the website for University Towne Center, (then called ShopUTC.com - see now [http://westfield.com/utc/ different site] ). This website was inaugurated in May 1995 by San Diego then-Mayor Susan Golding, who called it the "largest expansion in history for this major shopping center". On stage, Joan Embery [http://www.joanembery.com] who then hosted a popular TV show about animals was holding a parrot in her hands, which pressed the Enter key of a computer keyboard, and pulled the UTC home page for the first time on the web. This project won the 1995 Award for Best Overall Marketing Campaign for shopping centers of over 1 million square feet (90,000 m²) from the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC); Stacy Armstrong received the award for UTC.

Following ShopUTC.com were a number of noteworthy websites for Pearl Jam (rock band), Baker & McKenzie (law firm) and First Virtual Holdings (email-based secure online payment system). Bien Logic initial key staff were UCSD students and friends: Uyen Nguyen, Marc Northover, Mike ZeMans, talented Teresa Shaw and the unstoppable Bob Adams. Later joined 3 executives: Kevin McDermott (ops mgt), Charles Gillespie (pr & proposals), Jack Abbott (sales). Bien Logic established a well-defined 12-Step Process to design, produce and launch websites and interactive marketing campaigns; this process was at the core of its commercial success.

The firm continued to grow developing larger projects for Trizec-Hahn Company (shopping centers), San Diego Zoo, Sempra Energy (then called SDG&E), Lucent Technologies, Saturn Cars, CaliforniaMart, [http://www.procopio.com Procopio] (law firm), [http://www.avocado.org California Avocado Commission] , [http://www.apparelnews.com Apparel News] for MnM Publishing and many others.

Meanwhile, additional people joined the company, including Marlene Matheson (sales), Dana Todd and Joe Eibert (account exec), Lane Sharman (CTO), Victor Spindler (creative director) [http://internetideals.com/] , Victoria Battison (PR), Becky Savell (editorial), Marc Koob and Adrian Stewart (ops mgt), Troy Troxler (project mgr), and other important people.

Traffic Analysis Software

Bien Logic developed and marketed [http://www.accessmylibrary.com/comsite5/bin/pdinventory.pl?pdlanding=1&referid=2930&purchase_type=ITM&item_id=0286-9382504] two software applications that were among the first commercial-grade web traffic analyzers:
* SurfReport [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_1997_March_12/ai_19198294] (devt. led by Rick McGillis and Michel Delory based on graphics routine from MatchCoach), and
* ProxyReport [http://www.careerknowhow.com/surfing.htm] (devt. by Michel Delory).

Besides general web traffic reports, SurfReport in 1996 provided innovative and strategic marketing information, namely a list of keywords searched by web users in search engines that had led these users to visit the website where SurfReport was installed. At that time, major search engines were Netscape, Yahoo, Altavista, InfoSeek, and Excite, and none of them offered to buy keywords yet. In 1997, SurfReport was the first web traffic analyzer able to analyze over 1 Gygabyte of data in less than 1 hour. It was used by Netscape [http://www.netscape.com] to analyze some of its log files, (which were among the largest at the time). Frederic Bien, Michel Delory and Rick McGillis contributed articles about standardization of web server log files and analysis of their content [http://www.drdobbs.com/dept/architect/184410090] (correct date of this article is 1996). Oracle marketed SurfReport for its network computing architecture [http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_m0EIN/is_1997_March_12/ai_19198294] . John Logan was software sales manager.

Web Publishing

In addition, Bien Logic developed and published original websites that continue today:
* one of the very first online dating sites: [http://www.flirt.com Flirt.com] launched in February 1995 (expanding a simple webpage named "Flirt Online" in Dec 1994),
* web directory [http://www.planetearth.net Planet Earth Pages] , originally started by Richard Bocher at the San Diego US Navy. (In 1994, it was the 14th most visited website on the internet according to a Wired magazine ranking).

Other Team Members

Additional angel investors in the company were Lenny and Julia Baum, and Sandor Straus [http://www.firedoll.org/firedoll_about.html] . Jacob Reinbolt [http://procopio.com/profiles/attorney_detail.cfm?id=190] was general counsel, and became a prolific writer on the subject of intellectual property protection on the internet. Ken King (CFO), Nazanin Berenjian (controller) and Eric Boldt (taxes) handled Bien Logic finances.

Company Sale to SiteLab and Netrics

Bien Logic was sold at the end of 1997 to form [http://www.sitelab.com/Interactive_Web_Agency/index_seo_web_developer.html SiteLab LLC] and [http://www.netrics.com/ Netrics Inc] . SiteLab is now a Top 50 Interactive Ad Agency [http://www.sitelab.com/Interactive_Web_Agency/Online_Marketing_Releases/pr_sitelab_top50_agencies.asp] , led by former Bien Logic employees: Marlene Matheson [http://sitelab.com/Interactive_Web_Agency/sli_team_web_development.html] , Dana Todd (President of Board of SEMPO 2005 & 2006) [http://www.searchenginestrategies.com/sew/chicago06/dtodd.html] , and Mike ZeMans . Netrics is an innovative company [http://www.netrics.com/news_article.psp?newsID=6] providing high-end and intelligent search solutions for enterprise databases. Peter Yianilos is now Chairman of Netrics [http://www.netrics.com/index.php/Management/Management.html] .