The Duke and the Duck, the District-based video production agency and animation studio, has hired a director of new business development and is looking for new digs. According to cofounder Alex Herder, the new hire has been a long time coming.
"We've been circling around the idea for a long time," Herder explains. "My cofounder, Dave Ellington, is an animator. For [four years], our business was the 'support Dave club.' I was the jack of all trades but the master of none."
After listing many different roles and capacities in which the business could use support, Herder and Ellington decided that business development was the way to go. Enter Ric Cunningham. Cunningham recently led operations and marketing for the DelMarVa region of the Boy Scouts of America; prior to that, he was the VP of marketing for
Electric Owl Studios in Pittsburgh.
Herder says that as Cunningham builds the Duke and the Duck's client base, he and Ellington will bring more people into the company. "This is week two for Ric," Herder says. "We hope to be able to bring our part-time and freelance people on in a full-time capacity."
The Duke and the Duck have offices in Chinatown but they are looking to relocate; current officemates
Social Driver are staying put. "We're hoping to find another great agency to share space with," Herder says.
And the company name? Though he is loathe to commit to a single story, Herder says that it comes from the idea of a fairytale. "We're storytellers and artists," Herder explains. "We like the persuasive, inspiring, teaching nature of stories. Fairy tales are the best examples of that. The Duke and the Duck sounds like a fairy tale, without having the baggage associated with an existing fairy tale."
"We're always forming ideas of the characters we've built," Herder says, "and Dave's last name is Ellington."