In 1987, Jaime Zapata began recording radio commercials for a local FM station in his hometown of Arequipa, Peru. He quickly got into the new digital systems and began working with big multinational agencies like McCann Erickson, JW Thompson, Ogilvy & Mather, Nazca Saatchi & Saatchi, Leo Burnett and more. In April 2007 he partnered with Fernando Basadre and Raquel Ramirez to launch his dream recording facility and called it Tono Studios, with the goal of working with clients creative ideas while providing them with the best service in audio recording, postproduction and mixes in 5.1 surround sound. Today the studio has a portfolio of clients the likes of Conill Advertising, Orci, Casanova Pendrill, Draft FCB, Deutsch LA, Lopez Negrete, McGarry Bowen, Grupo Gallegos, Zubi Advertising and others. Among the more ambitious of its recent projects was the Toyota Highlander commercial with the Muppets in Spanish. There were a lot of production companies and music producers working together, it was a unique experience, he recalls. Tono Studios, a Santa Monica, California-based company staffed by Latinos, focuses in its pleasant atmosphere on delivering material that meets the highest technical standards, or that is, as Zapata puts it, bulletproof. Though he says he has no preferences about what the project is, he nonetheless says that I feel in the Hispanic market I can take part more creatively and that I can contribute more because I know the culture and the argot, not just the language.