• by Larissa Faw , October 13, 2015

Far too many creative agencies still track their campaigns by posting images on a wall or using Excel spreadsheets. Now, Atlanta-based startup Atomized is hoping to revolutionize these tactics with its new Live Rows management tool.  

"We want to be a painkiller, not the vitamin. Too many software companies want to be vitamins [only helping, not solving problems]," says Chris Gomersall, CEO, Atomized.  

Live Rows allows marketers to keep track all of their competitors’ campaigns and social activity automatically in one place, rather than monitoring campaigns, screen by screen and screenshot by screenshot. Or via the old school method by printing and posting on the wall.

"Our goal is to be omnichannel and look at everything. A big part of that is social, but we want to make [campaign management] easier for clients," says Gomersall.  

The platform works by transforming calendar dated information into live, interactive bits of content. Clients are able to follow information via three verticals: handles, such as brand names, hashtags, and geolocation. "If you are a fast-food brand, the left side would show all mentions of that brand, Vine, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook that are launched out in the world."

Then Atomized's software/platform handles all of a brand's creative — the "TV buys, out-of-home media, basically any execution" says Gomersall. These verticals are then "presented in an elegant way." 

Gomersall founded the company while he was a creative executive at Facebook and Instagram because he saw how marketers and agencies couldn't keep up with the increasing number of their creative iterations, whether it was on Facebook or more traditional channels. The new firm was unveiled in July. 

Prior to Facebook, he worked at creative shop Moxie before it was acquired by Publicis in 2006 where he also learned about these challenges.  

"It used to be that digital was about banner size and Web site design, now it’s thousands of outlets, from mobile to branded content. There was no way to review all of this creative stuff. Clients suffered from the same problem that they just wanted [a way] to show them what is going on."  

Gomersall's unique technology and creative background has made it easier to sell to clients, both directly to brands as well as through agencies. "It has been about 50-50 [working with agencies versus clients]," he says.

Still, inter-agency turf battles have proven to be an unexpected challenge. There isn't just one team uploading information which means getting everyone on the same page. "It isn't just the social team that we work with since we get all of the creative at once. This means print,TV, these multiple teams that want to [chime] in with their [input]."  

Ease of use was important to developing these tools. "Even though we can offer crazy, sophisticated solutions, we found people want to keep it pretty simple," says Gomersall. Critically, the tool works with a simple drag-and-drop technique to input data.