http://www.jibjab.com/originals/originals/jibjab/movieid/123In 1998, brothers Gregg and Evan Spiridellis saw a dancing doodie in a cartoon broadcast over the Internet and it changed their lives forever. At the time, Gregg was an MBA student at the Wharton School of Business recovering from four years of investment banking and Evan was an accomplished independent animator using off-the-shelf consumer technologies to create ground-breaking, festival-winning animated shorts.
Gregg and Evan in the Brooklyn office, which also doubled as Gregg's apartment
What the brothers saw in the web browser was not just an incredibly amusing dancing piece of dung, but also a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be pioneers in a brave new world of entertainment. So in 1999, Gregg freed himself from his investment banking shackles and the Spiridellis brothers launched JibJab in a Brooklyn garage - despite the fact that starting a business in a garage is really a cliché thing to do. Evan quickly assembled a team of artists including painters, photographers, illustrators and sculptors, most of whom had little or no experience with technology, and challenged them to think about the computer as just another tool to make art. In February 2000, JibJab created its first online hit with an interactive animation featuring the Founding Fathers rapping about the Declaration of Independence. The animation spread around the web like wildfire and, as the first dot com boom hit full swing, the brothers leveraged their success to build one of the leading original content production studios. As 2000 came to a close, it appeared as if the brothers were on the verge of creating the online comedy brand they dreamed of. Then came the dot com crash...
Evan and Gregg visit with Jay Leno
Within a six month period, all of JibJab's clients went out of business and the brothers were left scrambling to find other ways to keep their business afloat. They created a toy based on their "Nasty Santa" character that was popular online and sold it nationwide through Spencer Gifts. They created and produced animations for companies like Disney, Noggin and Kraft. They even published a children's book with rap super star LL Cool J. By the end of 2001 it was clear that online entertainment wasn't bouncing back anytime soon. In January 2002, the brothers committed their second start-up cliché when they rented a 24-foot U-Haul truck, packed both their apartments and the JibJab studio into the back of it, and headed across country to Los Angeles in search of greener pastures. The brothers quickly found LA to be as devoid of opportunities for online comedy as New York and worked quickly to get the business on solid footing. Long gone were the dreams of a media revolution. All they wanted now was to figure out a way to earn a living making people laugh.
Ahnuld eyes the Governor's office
From February 2002 to May 2004, they expanded their humorous toy line to more than a dozen items, published a best-selling holiday book with Disney's Hyperion Press, produced a series of viral animations for Sony, created a character for the hit series "Arrested Development", and continued to work like madmen on their own online original shorts. The "Farting Elves" made a big splash during Christmas 2002 and, in 2003, the brothers created an "Arnold for Governor" parody that landed them in the Sundance Online Film Festival. But nothing could have prepared them for what was about to happen next... On July 9, 2004, Gregg and Evan Spiridellis released "This Land" and everything they had been working to achieve since they first opened their studio in 1999, came true overnight. They emailed a link to the animation to the 130,000 registered JibJabbers that were subscribed to their newsletter at the time and, within days, millions of requests poured in from around the world for their movie. As they described in their first national interview with Brian Wilson on FOX News, their tiny little web server "spontaneously combusted"!
Bush and Kerry in This Land
The string of media attention that followed the release of THIS LAND was unprecedented. The Today Show, ABC News, Jay Leno, CNN, FOX, CNBC, Entertainment Weekly, Rolling Stone, The New York Times, Variety, Los Angeles Times and hundreds of other media outlets covered the story. The brothers followed THIS LAND with a world premiere on The Tonight Show of a second election parody entitled "Good to Be in DC!" establishing themselves as creators with the ability to make a big audience laugh more than just once. By the end of the election season both JibJab animations had been seen more than 80 million times online on every continent, including Antarctica, and NASA even contacted the brothers for permission to send a copy of the animation to the International Space Station. Then, on December 31, 2004, the brothers received the most incredible honor of all... Peter Jennings named them "People of the Year" on ABC's World News. JibJab started 2005 creating a series of movie trailers that played before every film at the Sundance Film Festival. They also did deals with Yahoo!, AtomFilms, MSN Video, and Anheuser Busch to fund a series of shorts including a hip-hop Passover parody called "Matzah!" and a scalding satire of large scale retailing called "Big Box Mart". Big Box Mart included the faces of more than 1,000 JibJabbers and the video received a World Premiere on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno. 2005 ended with another World Premiere on the Tonight Show for the brothers' smash hit year-in-review musical called "2-0-5".
Evan, Sonny the Landlord and Gregg
In 2006, brothers Gregg and Evan once again set out to break the mold. For them, JibJab was never just about political animation ... it was about making people laugh! So, in an effort to make JibJab a place that could deliver fresh laughs, everyday, they invented JokeBox. The brothers dreamed up the idea after wishing that they had a place to store all the nutty (and sometimes annoying) email jokes that their father sent them. Today, hundreds of thousands of JibJab members can upload their favorite funny videos, pictures and text jokes to their JokeBoxes and share them with friends and other JibJabbers. With JokeBox delivering fresh laughs everyday, the brothers have turned their attention back to producing their original brand of comedy. Only this time rather than trying to write, animate and produce everything themselves, they've teamed up with some of the best independent talent in the country so they could significantly expand their original programming while maintaining the high quality standards their audience has come to expect The brothers' vision is to transform JibJab into a creative platform for the best comedians, writers, artists, musicians and performers in the world -- the same way it was for them when they launched THIS LAND. When Gregg and Evan look back on the 2004 election, their best memories aren't of TV appearances or national media attention, but rather the stories they heard from their audience. From the son who hadn't talked politics with his dad for twenty years before they shared a laugh watching THIS LAND, to the soldier who told them that JibJab.com was blocked in Saddam Hussein's palace because too many soldiers were trying to download it at the same time. Making things that make people laugh has always made them feel good.
The JibJab team in Santa Monica
JibJab has grown considerably since the election. Today, the company is comprised of the best and the brightest artists, technologists and business people, working hard to change the way comedy is created, produced and distributed - and doing it with fewer employees than the local coffee shop. Gregg and Evan believe that what is happening right now is nothing short of the media revolution they first dreamed about in their Brooklyn garage and they have poured all of their creative and financial resources into making that dream a reality.
And they will never forget that it all started with a dancing doodie.
