Category: Featured Deal Toy

Google’s Iconic Lava Lamps and the Landmark Tombstone

August hasn’t traditionally been the most laid-back time of year for Google. In 2015, co-founders Larry Page and Sergey Brin chose the month to announce a corporate restructuring, and the formation of a new parent company, Alphabet. And on August 19th, 20 years ago, Google staged its landmark intiial public offering.

In honor of that milestone, we’re reposting this tribute to the 10th anniversary of the IPO—and the deal toy that commemorated it. Some of the numbers quoted then will seem laughably dated. Alphabet, for instance, now has a workforce totaling more than 180,000. Its market capitalization now exceeds two trillion.

The deal toy design, on the other hand, seems to have held up pretty well.

“I wouldn’t be buying Google stock, and I don’t know anyone who would”.

In the ten years today since Silicon Valley futurist Jerry Kaplan offered this assessment of the Google IPO’s prospects, the lava lamp—the celebrated Googleplex trapping that inspired the IPO deal toy design—commemorated its 50^th anniversary.

And in other news, Google stock during that same period increased more than 1000% on an adjusted basis; the company also achieved a market capitalization of approximately $180 billion…and its staff grew by a factor of 20—to more than 50,000 employees.

Even if we may have missed out on the IPO as an investment opportunity, those of us at The Corporate Presence can at least take comfort in being in on the deal toy.

Like massage chairs and pool tables, lava lamps are a key component of the Googleplex ambience, and have dotted the company’s lobbies almost from its inception. Creating and manufacturing a deal toy that not only commemorated a landmark issue—but did so in a way that resonated with Google employees—remain especially satisfying for us, even ten years later.

The Google IPO also gave us valuable experience we later put to use in commemorating other landmark deals in the tech sector—including both the Deal Toy for Facebook’s IPO as well as the Twitter IPO Deal Toy.

We want to congratulate both the lead underwriters of the issue, and especially Google and its employees.

David Parry is the Director of Digital Strategy for The Corporate Presence, and for Prestige Custom Awards, a designer and provider of custom corporate awards ranging from creative employee and client recognition pieces to the N.F.L. Commissioner’s Awards, and ESPN’s ESPY awards.

Related:
Twitter Adds Another Deal Toy to its Timeline
Featured Deal Toy: The Facebook IPO
The Lucite That Marks The “Most Profitable Deal in History”

This week marks the 8th anniversary of the initial public offering of Twitter, one of a number of landmark IPO deal toys, including those for Google and Facebook, that the Corporate Presence has designed over the years.

2021 also marks the 10th anniversary of what was actually the first Twitter deal toy we produced: the Lucite design, also shown below, commemorating an early investment in the social media platform.

In honor of both anniversaries, we’re republishing this post from 2014. Some of the metrics cited here may have changed (Twitter now has a global user base of about 396 million, and a market capitalization of approximately $43 billion), but what was written here 7 years ago, for the most part, still holds true.

Custom deal toy celebrates Twitter’s November, 2013 IPO

Just seven years separate these two tweets.

Since Jack Dorsey sent the inaugural tweet above on March 21, 2006, among other things, Twitter has, developed a global user base of over 230 million, achieved a market capitalization of approximately $35 billion, helped fuel political uprisings in several countries, given rise to both a Library of Congress archive and a sitcom, helped shape a presidential election—and, finally, produced two noteworthy deal toys.

At The Corporate Presence we’re happy to have designed both of those deal toys—each marking a significant growth step, not only in Twitter’s history, but in that of both global business and media.

The first deal toy (shown here) from 2011 commemorates the investment by JP Morgan Chase in a fund with a significant stake in Twitter.

Breaking into The All-Time IPO List

The more recent deal toy, also shown here, celebrates the initial public offering, the second largest internet IPO by an American company, surpassed only by that of Facebook (The Facebook IPO deal toy was also designed by The Corporate Presence, as was the Google IPO deal toy, marking the third-largest transaction on this list).

Underwriters for the issue included Goldman Sachs, in the lead role, as well as JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank, Allen & Company, and CODE Advisors.

David Parry is the Director of Digital Strategy for the Corporate Presence and Prestige Custom Awards, which provides a variety of awards including ESPN’s Espy Awards, and The National Football League Commissioner’s Awards.

Facebook’s landmark IPO also generated an iconic deal toy.

The Facebook IPO deal toy—along with those we designed to recognize the IPO’s for Google and Twitter—is arguably the deal toy we’re most often asked about. At meetings and presentations, it’s also one of the pieces clients most often request to see.

With next Monday marking the third anniversary of the IPO, we wanted to repost a feature on the Facebook deal toy that originally appeared in The New Republic. Those familiar the century-old publication might find this an extremely odd choice in subject matter—but it does make sense. TNR’s majority owner, Chris Hughes, is not only a Facebook alum, but was also one of Mark Zuckerberg’s Harvard roommates.

Blackstone’s $23 billion purchase of GE’s real estate assets recalled another, earlier landmark deal

Blackstone began April already the largest private sector landlord in the United States.

With its acquisition of GE’s real estate portfolio last week—a $23 billion deal in which the firm partnered with Wells Fargo—the firm then conclusively demonstrated, in the words of Morningstar analyst Stephen Ellis, that its “scale in the real-estate space is unmatched”.

The GE deal also inevitably prompted recaps of the real estate deals that have amassed Blackstone an estimated $100 billion in property and holdings. The Corporate Presence was fortunate enough to have been chosen to commemorate one of those deals, as we noted last September:

Blackstone’s $26 billion buyout of Hilton Hotels in 2007, a deal just pronounced the most profitable in history by Bloomberg Businessweek, actually went south pretty early on.

“As the financial crisis hit and the economy tanked”, the cover story notes, “it appeared that Blackstone and its partners had paid too much, used too much debt, and couldn’t have picked a worse moment to close the deal”.

Add to that the 2008 demise of deal participants Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, the resulting involvement of the New York Fed, as well as litigation involving a rival hotel chain, and the inevitable “Heartbreak Hotel”, “Not So ‘Suite’ Deal” headlines must have seemed apt.

But Blackstone persisted in its strategy; and in doing so, managed to upend private-equity clichés by combining shrewd debt restructuring with sound operational management. In the aftermath of Hilton’s December 2013 IPO, the firm is now looking at a paper profit on the deal of approximately $12 billion.

We were honored to have been chosen to commemorate this landmark deal—and would be equally honored to handle your next deal toy or award project. Give us a call today.

Related:
Twitter Adds Another Deal Toy to its Timeline
Featured Deal Toy: The Facebook IPO
The Google IPO Deal Toy: Celebrating the 10-Year Anniversary

Deal toy recognizes Blackstone’s foresight, tenacity—and ultimate success—in the purchase of Hilton Hotels

Blackstone’s $26 billion buyout of Hilton Hotels in 2007, a deal just pronounced the most profitable in history by Bloomberg Businessweek, actually went south pretty early on.

“As the financial crisis hit and the economy tanked”, the cover story notes, “it appeared that Blackstone and its partners had paid too much, used too much debt, and couldn’t have picked a worse moment to close the deal”.

Add to that the 2008 demise of deal participants Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers, the resulting involvement of the New York Fed, as well as litigation involving a rival hotel chain, and the inevitable “Heartbreak Hotel”, “Not So ‘Suite’ Deal” headlines must have seemed apt.

But Blackstone persisted in its strategy; and in doing so, managed to upend private-equity clichés by combining shrewd debt restructuring with sound operational management. In the aftermath of Hilton’s December 2013 IPO, the firm is now looking at a paper profit on the deal of approximately $12 billion.

None of which we had anything to do with.

We just designed and produced the deal toy; but we’re convinced now, more than ever, that we did a pretty good job with that part of the deal.

We wanted to share again the Lucite 3-D rendering of the Waldorf Astoria, and also offer our congratulations to Blackstone—and, of course, to Hilton.

Related:
Twitter Adds Another Deal to its Timeline
The Google IPO Deal Toy: Celebrating the 10-Year Anniversary
Featured Deal Toy: The Facebook IPO
The Lucite That Marks The “Most Profitable Deal in History”

Custom deal toy celebrates Twitter’s November 2013 IPO

Just seven years separate these two tweets.

Since Jack Dorsey sent the inaugural tweet above on March 21, 2006, among other things, Twitter has, developed a global user base of over 230 million, achieved a market capitalization of approximately $35 billion, helped fuel political uprisings in several countries, given rise to both a Library of Congress archive and a sitcom, helped shape a presidential election—and, finally, produced two noteworthy deal toys.

At The Corporate Presence we’re happy to have designed both of those deal toys—each marking a significant growth step, not only in Twitter’s history, but in that of both global business and media.

The first deal toy (shown here) from 2011 commemorates the investment by JP Morgan Chase in a fund with a significant stake in Twitter.

Breaking into The All-Time List

The more recent deal toy, also shown here, celebrates the initial public offering, the second-largest internet IPO by an American company, surpassed only by that of Facebook (The Facebook IPO deal toy was also designed by The Corporate Presence, as was the Google IPO deal toy, marking the third-largest transaction on this list).

Underwriters for the issue included Goldman Sachs, in the lead role, as well as JPMorgan Chase, Bank of America Merrill Lynch, Deutsche Bank, Allen & Company, and CODE Advisors.

David Parry is the Director of Digital Strategy at The Corporate Presence.

Related:
The Google IPO Deal Toy: Celebrating the 10-Year Anniversary
Featured Deal Toy: The Facebook IPO
The Lucite That Marks The “Most Profitable Deal in History”

In her determination to accommodate her client’s design wishes, Jane Whitaker had hit a brick wall—literally.

The banker had reached out to The Corporate Presence’s London office for a deal toy design for a landmark European real estate transaction. Terra Firma, a U.K.-based private equity firm, had in July, 2013 listed its portfolio company Deutsche Annington on the Frankfurt Stock Exchange, an issue worth approximately €500 million.

Deutsche Annington is Germany’s biggest residential real estate firm, with over 190,000 units across the country.

The client wanted a deal toy commemorating both the IPO, as well as subsequent October offerings (including a U.S. 1 billion dual-tranche bond, the largest-ever U.S. bond issue by a European property company. J.P. Morgan and Morgan Stanley served as joint global coordinators and joint bookrunners for the transactions).

A Deal Toy Befitting a Landmark Deal

There was little time before the deal’s scheduled closing dinner, but the client understandably wanted a design reflecting the scale and significance of the transactions. The client’s immediate preference was to incorporate a brick wall in the deal toy design—a real brick wall.

Jane recognized that using real brick would pose some practical as well as aesthetic issues—especially after the client suggested that the design incorporate keys to convey the properties’ residential character. Any design that involved drilling secure keyholes in actual brick would simply have been unachievable—especially given the time constraints.

Making use of high-resolution images of brick, and alternate materials, Jane’s deal toy design was able to achieve the effect the client was after.“Knowing the capabilities of different materials—knowing what will really work best in a given design and situation— is a huge part of our job, and of what differentiates us with clients”, she explains.

“For the door keys, we were trying for a slightly old-fashioned look, rather than simply some modern, generic door lock. We ended up using fire brigade keys, and having to source almost 300 of them! But we definitely got the look the client wanted—and all in time for their closing dinner”.

The Facebook IPO

For our inaugural installment of “Featured Deal Toy,” we have chosen a transaction that, among other things, did not actually occur this month.

Or even last month, for that matter.

In fact, it didn’t even take place this year.

Even so, it would’ve been pretty hard for us to choose anything else. After all, beginning with a May item in The New Republic marking the first anniversary of the IPO—and focusing specifically on our deal toy design—Facebook has had even more press than usual.

With Facebook stock since climbing above its IPO price, its mobile strategy appearing to take shape, and profits for the most recent quarter considerably exceeding estimates, the issue—and our memento—are now looking even better.

In any case, The Corporate Presence was honored then to have been chosen to design the Facebook IPO deal toy, and are especially pleased to revisit it now.

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David Parry is the Director of Digital Strategy at The Corporate Presence, where he has worked in sales and marketing for almost 20 years. A graduate of Brown University, he also directs Scholarly Awards, a subsidiary of The Corporate Presence specializing in custom Lucite awards for colleges and universities.

Related:
Twitter Adds Another Deal to its Timeline
The Google IPO Deal Toy: Celebrating the 10-Year Anniversary
The Lucite That Marks The “Most Profitable Deal in History”