Lon Gibby no longer looks like the Fender guitar poster child he became 40-some years ago when the prominent guitar manufacturer ran advertisements featuring a picture of himthen a blond-haired, 13-year-old surfer boy, strumming a Stratocaster while riding a skateboard.


The Spokane Valley business owner doesnt seem to have lost, though, the exuberance and self-marketing panache captured in his expression in the old monochromatic photo. He keeps a framed copy of the photo on the wall in his office at his small multimedia company, Gibby Media Group Inc., partly because it helps me think young, which he says is crucial in his industry.


It helps inspire me with the things were doing now. Some of it is cutting-edge stuff, and requires being flexible and willing to embrace constant technological change, Gibby says.


I love that part of the business, he says. You have to keep learning. You never learn it all.


Founded here in 1983, Gibby Media Grouporiginally called Lon Gibby Productions Inc.says it has produced more than 3,000 videos, ranging from instructional videos and infomercials to corporate demos and documentaries, for local, regional, and global clients.


Once confined largely to 18 mm film and slides as its production media, followed by Betamax and VHS videotape, the company now offers software and Internet-related services, does all of its editing digitally, and converts most of its work to digital videodiscs. In fact, electronic business cardspocket-sized mini-discs that contain short video presentations about clients businesses or operationshave become a mainstay for us, Gibby says.


Most people dont have a lot of time. Youve got to tell your story in five minutes, or youre toast, and visual presentations excel at that, he asserts.


Gibby Media Group occupies about two-thirds of a 9,000-square-foot, two-story building at 1213 S. Pines that Gibby owns, and it currently employs eight people, although Gibby says he hopes to add four or five more employees by the end of this year. That increase will depend, he says, on whether some projects the company currently is pursuing grow as anticipated. The company also works with about 18 sales representatives around the country who market its products and services, Gibby says.


He declines to disclose Gibby Media Groups revenues, but says theyve been rising recently. Theyve tended to fluctuate over the years, depending on economic cycles and what projects the company had in the works, he says. The company nearly succumbed, for example, after the 2001 terrorist attacks, when many businesses sharply reduced spending on training and marketing, but was able to get back on track with the help of a U.S. Small Business Administration loan.


Looking ahead, though, Gibby says he expects to see a steadier income stream from the replication side of our business as it gets larger-volume orders for new-generation proprietary discs that the company now is marketing.


The companys main-floor space includes a software-development room, several digital editing rooms, a small-run replication room where it can produce 500 to 1,000 discs a day, and an audio recording studio. It also includes a curved-wall virtual studio, or green room, that it uses when it wants to create images that place real people or objects in computer-generated environments.


A library, conference room, sales office, and Gibbys office are located on the second floor, and computer servers and storage space are in the basement.


In one of its larger recent pieces of business, Gibby Media Group is finishing work on 18 videos, with accompanying brochures that include a sleeve for the DVDs, for Texas-based Covenant Health System, Gibby says. Locally, it has been working on projects for Spokane-based Baker Construction & Development Inc., the Spokane Tribe of Indians, and Northeast Washington Housing Solutions, among others.


The companys clients also have included such organizations as Greater Spokane Incorporated, the Boy Scouts of Americas Inland Northwest Council, the Washington Association of Wheat Growers, the U.S. Tennis Association, and big corporations such as Ford Motor Co. and Hewlett-Packard Co.


It has shot video in many countries around the world, from Russia to South America, Gibby says, and its videos have won 16 national Telly Awards, which recognize TV commercials and programs, video and film productions, and work created for the Web.


Gibby says the companys fees can vary widely, depending on the scope of a project and how much the client is willing to spend. He says, though, it typically charges around $15,000 for a five-minute videocounting shooting, editing, and adding whatever special effects or animation might be needed. That charge includes 500 copies of the disc and accompanying brochures.


It also provides Web site development and hosting.


Gibby Media Group developed a proprietary disc, called the GibbyDisc, a number of years ago that it markets for video presentations and thats designed to load instantly, take up the entire screen, and play without hassles on PCs and Apple computers as well as on home DVD players. A software engine embedded in the disc enables it to operate seamlessly without touching a computers hard drive, and yet gives the viewer complete control over the content, Gibby says.


He says he believes that the best marketing approach today is a multifaceted, interactive one that includes print, Web, and DVD elements, and he says, Our format incorporates all of those mediums into one.


The company hopes to score additional new business with a thinner, more flexible type of DVD, called the GibbyThin, that it began marketing recently and that Gibby believes can breathe new life into the direct-mail industry. The discs were developed overseas, but Gibby Media Group is one of the first North American distributors for them and is adding its technology to them, he says.


The disc can hold 4.7 gigabytes of data, but is flexible enough to wrap around a water bottle without breaking and can pass through mail-sorting machines without problems, meaning it can be attached to magazine covers or similar mailed items, he says.


Gibby contends that thin discs are environmentally friendly, lacking the toxic bonding agents contained in standard rigid DVDs, and he is touting them as an alternative to printed catalogs, among other uses. They cost about 25 percent more to produce than standard DVDs, but offset that greater cost through reduced packaging and shipping expenses.


The company recently has reached a strategic alliance with Australia-based Media Mail Solutions Inc., which produces a thin sleeve that potentially would allow the discs to be mailed at discounted rates, and is exploring market opportunities for such a joint product, he adds.


Gibby Media Group has produced a video on putting tips for Denver-based Yes! Golf that it had burned onto 10,000 of the thin discs, and based on what Gibby sees as its huge potential, he says, Our goal between now and the end of the year is about 30 million and next year 100 million (thin discs sold). We believe its achievable.


He says, Our business model is based on reaching a mass market. We want playability.


Gibby attended Brigham Young University, in Provo, Utah, where he received a degree in broadcasting and cinematography. His wife, Mary Ann, is from Spokane, and the couple decided to move here, rather than head for California after finishing college, because they thought this would be a better place to raise children, he says.


They moved here in 1977, and Gibby operated a company called Creative Audio Video Inc. for a number of years before founding Lon Gibby Productions. Doing this kind of business in Spokane was a challenge during the early years, he says, but now its not, because we can do business anywhere in the world thanks to the Internet, he says.


As for the Fender guitar poster that Gibby posed for all those years ago, it made a cameo appearance in an opening scene of the Alvin and the Chipmunks movie released last year, for which Gibby and the widow of the photographer who shot the picture each were paid $2,500.


Gibby says he didnt get to keep the guitar used in the photo, which today would be worth about $25,000, but has a cheaper version of it, and also still has a skateboard, which he rides occasionally as a way to bond with some of his eight grandchildren.


Contact Kim Crompton at (509) 344-1263 or via e-mail at kimc@spokanejournal.com.