by Helen Jung, The Oregonian

The Portland advertising scene may have been settled by the Wiedens and the Kennedys, but the industry's growth spurt is coming in part from firms like FashionBuddha.

Founded five years ago, the digital media firm has grown from one person -- founder Robert Lewis -- to a staff of seven. Instead of the coffee shops where Lewis built Web sites, FashionBuddha has moved into a 3,000-square-foot office in Old Town with its own video studio. And instead of worrying about making a living as a freelancer, Lewis has been enjoying watching his business grow.

With the dot-com crash a faded memory, and with broadband Internet access widely available, businesses are excited about the possibilities of digital marketing. "Nowadays the sky is the limit," Lewis said.

His company is among a growing cluster of small shops that have taken root in Portland in the past few years, as marketers are looking increasingly to the Internet. Besides the young upstarts, traditional agencies are beefing up hiring on the digital media front.

Portland's culture and lifestyle attract newcomers -- such as motion-graphics star Nando Costa -- who are helping the area develop into a modest hub of digital media advertising expertise.

Costa's "a big reason to move up there," said Bradley Grosh, an award-winning motion graphics artist known as Gmunk, who is debating a move to Portland or San Francisco. And though Portland doesn't have as much in the digital media space as San Francisco, Los Angeles or New York, "there's something definitely going on," he added. "It's on the up and up."

Although no one knows the number of digital media/marketing shops in Portland, there are some signs of the industry's growing size. Lewis' company sponsors a support networking Web site called gotoandplay.net. About 650 digital media artists around Portland who freelance or work at agencies or at small shops use the site.

Digital marketing these days is far more sophisticated and subtle than the banner ads on the Internet that defined the dot-com boom of the late 1990s and early 2000. Businesses are collectively spending billions on everything from how to boost their rankings in Google searches to creating blogs as marketing tools.

Even small businesses that never really considered how they communicate with customers are giving digital media a look, said Brad Smith, president of Portland-based Hot Pepper Studios, founded in 1991.

So far, there's enough business -- and different kinds of business -- that digital media shops largely collaborate rather than compete, said David Lowe-Rogstad of the new Portland digital media shop Substance. "Many of the people I know who have started small shops in the past two, three, five years are so busy with work, that they're turning away work," he said.

And many specialize in different aspects of digital media. Dru Martin and Michael Krol, who combined their two shops into Moto Interactive + Branding, focus on brand development and Web site building. Others specialize in animation, e-newsletters or Internet direct response marketing.

While Portland may not have as much allure for digital media artists as San Francisco, it does have its attractions. Costa, an award-winning graphic artist previously with Modernista! in Boston, said he and his wife decided to move to Portland for the lifestyle and environment.

"When I moved here I actually knew nothing about the market in motion graphics or film, neither about the high-end stop-motion reputation the city has," said the Brazilian-born artist. He has just started a new motion-graphics firm in Portland called Nervo. "This all came as a bonus to us."

The second coming of Internet advertising isn't restricted to small firms. Wieden+Kennedy, for instance, has recently built up its digital media services.

"Every agency is trying to catch up and trying to bolster their interactive capability," said Greg Tozian, at Overland Agency. The interactive firm has doubled from 12 to 24 people. "They're fighting for talent just like we are."

Agencies are looking outside the usual places for employees. Dennis Hahn of the Portland marketing agency ID Branding said he recently hired someone from Intel Corp. While Intel might not immediately seem like a hotbed of marketing talent, the company employs technologically savvy workers whose skills mesh with the agency's needs.

"We're focusing on the competencies required to do the work rather than the resume of where they have been," he said. They're looking for people familiar with designing Web sites with usability in mind and who understand how people interact with the Web.

"The question is how does (digital media) rank with all the other communication (media)," said Hahn. "I think people are still figuring that out."