About Digital Warlock
It’s 2025 – Now Headquartered on the Las Vegas Strip!
In October of 1993, Scott Willis founded a small website design and consulting firm called Rook Information Systems in Dayton, Ohio. The Internet was relatively new, at least in terms of small and medium size businesses effectively using it to promote services and products. Working from a Virtual Office, which at the time, was not common, Rook became involved in the Dayton business community, starting with Chambers of Commerce, and local network organizations.
In 2002, the company rebranded itself as Rook Interactive, to reflect its focus in Website Design, and Website and Email Hosting. It quickly became a mainstay in the local area, expanded staff, and added its first small commercial office location In Centerville, Ohio. At this point, Rook was seeing more and more demand for stronger hosting solutions, and began customizing and designing its own dedicated servers, and partnerships with datacenters based in the United States to enhance control, security, and overall speed of service.
The new servers and speed caused a surge in the new business, and Commercial Website and Email Hosting quickly become a very strong part of Rook’s services. It was at this time, founder Scott Willis also decided to offer the new hosting solution to other agencies and design services as a white label provider, specializing in dedicated service for optimal speed, design flexibility, and security. This turned out to be just the beginning of Rook’s offering to others in the advertising and design community, where these companies were happy to have a stronger, faster, and secure design environment, and could truly focus their efforts and staff on design and strategic planning for their clients. This ongoing relationship inspired the company to work closer with agencies, and also to begin creating specific services to market and promote websites, and also work with the agencies to provide these services to a wider range of clients across the country as a wholesale provider.
Search Engine Optimization soon became the companies most popular service, mainly because most service providers did not want to be transparent with the process, nor provide any form of accountability for the results of the service, which was considered a mystery by many. Rook also began attracting clients from not only different states, but countries as well, and it became obvious that while many website design firms were sprouting up, the need for specialized marketing and promotions of new and existing websites was going to be in high demand. This resulted in the creation of new partnered solutions with Associated Press, Cision, Google Maps, and Apple Maps to provide additional specific marketing efforts that would help and increase websites marketing exposure and further enhance their SEO presence worldwide.
The business model of working mostly as wholesale provider of services to design firms and advertising agencies was very well accepted in the following years. Rook added new services in print design and tradeshow material production, and even setup video production service for both television use, and the new trend of online video. Social media has also begun to surge as a business marketing method, and building a strategy of combining all of these relatively new methods was also being requested often.
In 2004, founder Scott Willis decided to streamline the company’s offerings to focus primarily on the use of Internet technology – to specialize in this field above all others. He and the staff also wanted to work more remotely, taking advantage of the new flexibility, the Internet provided – allowing them to work from anywhere – home, vacation, or while traveling. The term “Digital Nomad” had not really been coined yet, but the Rook team was anxious to work in the new medium in this manner. So, the physical office lease was not renewed, and Rook Interactive became a true virtual company. This also allowed Rook team members to travel to visit more agencies across the country and establish more ongoing wholesale partnerships. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina battered New Orleans, Louisiana mercilessly, and later that year, Founder Scott Willis relocated to New Orleans to run Rook from there, and also donate time to the relief effort, and help rebuild and recover some of the city’s cultural treasures. Rook Interactive as a business continued to grow, and many of its clients also participated in the relief efforts over the next two years. In 2008, after much of the relief effort was completed, the company decided to move to Denver, Colorado as its new home base, and stayed in Denver for the next 10 years.
The demand for Organic Search Engine Optimization, and the marketing services that helped fuel business performance had become the highest demanded focus of the company, along with a new interest in high-speed and secure hosting – businesses were more aware of the privacy and security risks of operating online businesses now. In addition, over the years, there had been a growing concern of SEO providers not performing or simply misrepresenting their efforts in the industry. As a long-term veteran in the world of Search Engine Optimization, founder Scott Willis was asked to be a keynote speaker often in the United States and abroad. The most popular and requested subject to be discussed was Ethics and Practices in the new Digital Mediums and how to expect Accountability and grade providers performance. A new service had become requested on an ongoing basis – the request to AUDIT other digital marketing providers and determine if services were being truthfully provided.
At the same time, the role of Social Media Influencer had become prevalent in the Internet world. This created a whole new market for marketing, ad placement, short form video and podcasts – and this new growth had started in California. At the same time, businesses had started to realize that their new online presence required attending – and also needed to constantly be fed with new content – blogs, writing, and emails to outreach to clients in a world drowning in information. Without fresh content and information, sites would be ignored and left behind – so content had now become KING in getting a website found, as well as retaining repeat visitors. With these market changes happening – Rook Interactive decided to head west to Los Angeles to become more integrated in what was happening. But there was a problem – in California, there was another company named Rook that offered similar services. Scott then decided to rebrand the company as Digital Warlock, as it is known today.
Los Angeles was amazing for its connections to writers, video production services, and Digital Warlock continued to refine and expand new video offerings, as well as content writing, and the new analytics needed to track and gauge performance from Social Media efforts, Search Engine Rankings, Press Coverage, and video channels and feeds. The business continued to grow and had actually committed new sales and business well beyond the United States – Digital Warlock actually had clients in every continent, with the exception of Antartica. Then Covid swept the globe, and California was exceptionally hard hit – Los Angeles was completely shut down, and it was very difficult to even maintain the business in downtown LA. So, when it was possible, Digital Warlock made the cross country move to Texas, where things were a little more open, and less expensive to maintain during the crisis.
Digital Warlock operated in Texas for a few years, before coming back west to Las Vegas, Nevada, our current home as of 2022, and setting up its new office in a high rise on the Las Vegas Strip. Now clients from around the world seem to be more interested in ever in coming to visit us in person, whether for the Superbowl, the Formula One Race, or for the trade shows that have been coming back to Sin City. The International Airport here makes it very easy for us to visit any of our clients in the United States and abroad, and we are now in the process of setting up new servers overseas to provide even faster service to our clients there. Now with Artificial Intelligence, and the many political and international trade policies enfolding, we will help clients adapt and embrace the needed changes to survive the turmoil, prepare for the future, and excel in reaching their clients, and business goals.
It’s definitely been and continues to be a journey… 🙂
