Rakontur Films' Marketing Strategy

Typically clad in cargo shorts and flip-flops, 30-year-olds Alfred Spellman and Billy Corben look easy to dismiss. But amid widespread angst for content makers, their Miami production house, Rakontur Films, has become a case study in successful viral marketing.

The studio's revenue, which includes DVD sales and production contracts, has doubled annually for the past three years. It just released the sequel to its 2006 indie hit Cocaine Cowboys, and it has inked creative deals with ESPN Films and Warner Brothers TV for a Cowboys HBO series. And the scrappy startup has done it with a total staff of five, including themselves. "They've created a whole new audience: an alternative, youth-leaning, nonfiction-seeking core," says Tom Quinn, senior vice-president of Magnolia Pictures, which distributed the Cowboys series.