ONAR (OTCQB:RELT) CEO Claude Zdanow joined Proactive to discuss the recent rebranding of its digital marketing arm and flagship product to Storia.
Storia is an AI-enabled performance marketing agency focused on helping brands reach their desired audiences, Zdanow highlighted.
With the goal of eventually listing on the Nasdaq, Zdanow’s focus is on establishing a strong governance structure and continuing strategic acquisitions.
Proactive: The company made an announcement that you're rebranding to Storia, which is your digital marketing arm of the company and really a flagship product of the company and business. And this is really what we've seen over the last little while, you reinventing where you are with ONAR (OTCQB:RELT).
Claude Zdanow: This is the beginning of a long journey, and I look at it as a marathon. And this is just one of the many steps that we've outlined as we look at the business holistically. We started with a rebrand of ONAR before we completed the reverse merger into Reliant Holdings, RELT, which is the ticker. What we're basically looking at is now that we've completed that, we look at each one of our business units, and we want to effectively say, how can we have the best brand, the best messaging that communicates with the end consumer and the people who are going to want to know what we do out there?
And I think, as you mentioned, Storia is our flagship. You know, it's our AI-enabled performance marketing agency. We really focus on reaching customers on behalf of brands. Can be consumer product companies, a range of different brands. But for us, it's important to also be able to speak to our customers and to them to understand who we are, why we do what we do and what the difference is. And so that's, you know, again, one of the many steps that we're doing as we look at each and every business unit holistically within the ONAR family.
And Storia is really where you want to be right now as far as digital advertising marketing is concerned. It really is poised for the next step of where this type of industry is going.
Yes. Look, the business has been built from the ground up, really thinking about where digital marketing is going to be in the future as well as today. Right. Given everything from the financial model in terms of how we bill and charge customers and aligned with customers, to how we really are focused on results, to obviously, how we're using machine learning and AI technologies to basically be able to drive advertisements more effectively to the right person, to the right end consumer, I should say, to really drive that maximum result for our client. Right. We live in a very fragmented digital world. There's lots of ads everywhere, right? We're getting numb to that as a consumer just generally. Right. So it's important to be able to leverage what technology can be doing to help us with creative and also making sure that ad gets to the right person on the right channel at the right time.
And I would imagine that that introduction of AI has really made it a way to have it cost-driven as well, because a lot of these big clients are looking for the most bang for their buck. But being able to use the tools and technologies that you have, I would imagine really allows you to sort of take to the client. Here's what we're going to get, here's what it's going to cost. And that's a big bonus.
AI is efficiency. I know people talk about it as, you know, replacing people's jobs and, and in some actions, there is an element of that. But in reality, it's making us being able to use the same manpower to do more. Right. That's really how I look at it. I think of it as the screwdriver becoming the drill. Right. You know, you could put a lot more screws in the wood with the drill. Right. And that's the same way we think about it. So being able to just be that much more effective, and being able to handle that much more for our clients. Right. Because if you think about digital advertising holistically, when it, you know, it first came to be years and years ago, right?
We're talking about search engine advertising was like some of the earliest days. Right now, there are thousands of places where you can be running digital advertisements. So to have a single person or a team of people being able to oversee all that and all the different creative assets or advertisements that exist in all those different places, it would be impossible to do that effectively without artificial intelligence. Right? And then you start using, you know, those technologies, these tools to basically then be able to make better decisions about how we're spending client money to make those advertisements more effective.
What's your focus now for the rest of the summer and what is going to be a very busy fall?
We're in the beginning process. We're still working on the formal name change of the entity. We have a lot of kind of wood to chop as far as the actual public company goes. You know, we're building a company as if we're going to be on Nasdaq. Right? So everything from thinking about what our governance is going to look like, thinking about who our board members are going to be, thinking about all the pieces of the puzzle to really run this company in an institutional sort of fashion.
We're on OTCQB right now. It's great. It's a great stepping stone to where we want to be. But that is my real big focus, how do we really institutionalize our business as if we're a Nasdaq company? You know, by the end of the summer, kind of going into the end of the year and really set up for making sure all our businesses are performing and growing as we continue to look for strategic acquisitions because strategic acquisitions are a big part of our vision for the future.
Quotes have been lightly edited for clarity and style