Alternate title:  The Big Dogs Join Balihoo! 

Below I’ll copy a press release that just went out today from us detailing the creation of a couple of advisory councils.  But first, a little color commentary. 

It was about a year ago that Pete (our CEO) started talking about developing these advisory councils with key contacts we had developed in the industry.  These were people that we were already talking to in one form or another around Balihoo and our direction.  Toward the end of 2007 Pete asked me to set up the council formally, and frankly I wasn’t thrilled with the prospect.  I had in my mind a group of old-school media pundits that we would get together occassionally to schmooze….boy was I wrong. 

After a couple of meetings with both of these groups, I have to say that I’m amazed with the depth of their knowledge of the media business and the incredibly valuable insight that they’ve been able to provide us.  They’ve all provided fantastic perspective to us individually, but getting them all together in one meeting certainly becomes more than a sum of the individual pieces.  They all bring a different, fresh perspective to the business and they’ve helped us craft our offering and our message into something that is truly different and valuable. 

Enough background - on to the announcement!

Media Industry Leaders Join Balihoo Advisory Council to Benefit Media Buying and Selling Community Balihoo, a media buying and planning platform, creates advisory councils designed to identify and drive strategic business objectives and guide product development initiatives 

NEWS FACTS 

• Balihoo forms Senior Advisory Council and Product Advisory Board to provide the company with the insight and knowledge necessary to establish the organization as the industry standard for connecting media buyers and media sellers.
• The Senior Advisory Council is comprised of media industry leaders who have joined the council to benefit the media buying and selling community. Members of the council include:

·         Tim Hanlon, Executive Vice President of Ventures, Denuo

·         Laura McFarlane, Managing Partner & Chief Strategy Officer, Beyond Interaction

·         Paul Miller, CEO, TechInsights, A Division of United Business Media

·         Lisa Weinstein, Managing Director, Mindshare Chicago

• The Product Advisory Board will help Balihoo define and implement the development of its products for both media buyers and media sellers. Members of the board include:

·         Ross Ayotte, Chief Marketing Officer, TechInsights, A Division of United Business Media

·         Lynne Langlois, Group Account Director, Carat

·         Wayne Silverman, Vice President, Sales, CNET Networks, Inc.

·         Hollis Thomases, President, WebAdvantage 

PRESS RELEASE Boise, ID; April 30, 2008 – Balihoo, the only on-demand media buying and planning platform that provides intelligent software-PLUS-services to media professionals across all mediums, today announced its Senior Advisory Council and Product Advisory Board. These councils are designed to provide Balihoo with the insight and knowledge necessary to establish the organization as the industry standard for connecting media buyers and media sellers. 

“Our council members have recognized what Balihoo has to offer to the media buying and selling industry and will provide us with the guidance needed to establish Balihoo’s offering as the industry standard,” said Balihoo CEO Pete Gombert. “Balihoo will greatly benefit from our Senior Advisory Council’s expertise, helping us shape the future of efficient and cost-effective media transactions.” 

Composed of industry leaders in the media agency and publishing fields, Balihoo’s Senior Advisory Council will assist in identifying and meeting its strategic business objectives, while providing guidance to the overall business plan. Balihoo CEO Pete Gombert and Vice President of Sales Alison Say will serve as Co-Chairpersons of the Senior Advisory Council, whose members include: Tim Hanlon (Executive Vice President of Ventures, Denuo), Laura McFarlane (Managing Partner & Chief Strategy Officer, Beyond Interaction), Paul Miller (CEO, TechInsights, A Division of United Business Media) and Lisa Weinstein (Managing Director, Mindshare Chicago). 

BALIHOO SENIOR ADVISORY COUNCIL MEMBER BIOGRAPHIES: 

Tim Hanlon, Executive Vice President of Ventures, Denuo 

Tim Hanlon is Executive Vice President of Ventures for Denuo, the futures consulting practice of advertising and marketing agency holding company Publicis Groupe, S.A. He is chiefly responsible for the solicitation, negotiation and oversight of the unit’s strategic partnership and equity investment activity, focused exclusively on paradigm-changing “new media” platforms and technologies. His current role is an outgrowth of his previous work as head of Publicis Groupe Media (PGM) Ventures, and includes formal advisory positions with more than three dozen prominent digital media startups.  

Laura McFarlane, Managing Partner & Chief Strategy Officer, Beyond Interaction
Laura McFarlane is a digital marketing veteran with a track record of introducing and operationalizing technology-based business and marketing solutions. She has a proven ability to conceive and develop cross-medium business and marketing solutions from product launches through relationship marketing to media strategies. Over the past three years, she has focused on the development of “Community Intelligence” to understand new emerging digital behavioral trends, and how to leverage network effects within the context of marketing and media strategies. 

Paul Miller, CEO, TechInsights, A Division of United Business Media

Paul Miller is CEO of TechInsights (formerly CMP’s Electronics Group), a global media, professional services and marketing services business that provides decision makers in the electronics industry - the Creators of Technology - the essential information and workflow tools they need to achieve their business and product goals. He is responsible for TechInsights’ product portfolio and has spearheaded its global expansion into market and competitive intelligence and professional consulting services with innovative acquisitions including How Machines Work Corporation and Semiconductor Insights. He has had a distinguished career in the media business, holding several sales, publisher, and executive management positions over his 18 years at CMP and UBM. 

Lisa Weinstein, Managing Director, Mindshare Chicago

In February 2007, Lisa was named a managing partner and Managing Director of MindShare’s Chicago office.  She oversees the 160+ person Chicago operation including clients such as Wrigley, Kimberly-Clark, Unilever, Motorola and BP, with billings totaling nearly $1 billion. Lisa was recently honored by Advertising Age as one of their “40 under 40,” a group of people characterized by their “unprecedented responsibility and bold decision-making.” Previously, Lisa was the global managing director on BP where she managed a staff of 75 worldwide employees and directed all media marketing efforts for BP’s corporate, retail and Castrol divisions. Just last year, BP’s corporate campaign was awarded a US Effie for five-year sustained success.  

In addition to the Senior Advisory Council, The Product Advisory Board will help Balihoo define and implement the development of its products for both media buyers and media sellers. The board is led jointly by Balihoo product marketing manager Jennifer Dorothea and product manager Kevin Donaldson. Members of the board include: Ross Ayotte (Chief Marketing Officer, TechInsights, A Division of United Business Media), Lynne Langlois (Group Account Director, Carat), Wayne Silverman (Vice President, Sales, CNET Networks, Inc.) and Hollis Thomases (President, WebAdvantage).   

About Balihoo
Balihoo (www.balihoo.com), based in Boise, Idaho, is web-based software that streamlines the media research, selection, and request-for-proposal (RFP) processes with on-demand data, and then aggregates all that information into one easy-to-use single location accessible by an entire company. Based on the world’s largest database of advertising opportunities, Balihoo helps media organizations make faster/better decisions and create more effective media plans by helping them easily find, gather, analyze and share data. For media owners, Balihoo extends the visibility and accessibility of advertising opportunities to drive interest and sales.

The Center for Media Research posted an interesting research brief today on the recall performance of green messaging.  According to the article, a recent study found that “37.1% of consumers [say] they frequently recall green messaging and an additional third [recall] it occasionally”.  These very high recall numbers would suggest it’s time for celebration in many a marketing department.  But let’s keep the cork in the champagne bottle because the real learning here comes from the stat that “22.7% [of] respondents say they seldom or never believe green claims made in advertisements”.  In essence consumers are saying, “Great job on getting me to remember your message, but I just don’t believe what you’re telling me.” 

Part of this problem may be attributable to the fact that when it comes to defining “green” there are several ways to skin a soybean.  Today’s Marketing Daily article on the FTC’s upcoming regulatory review of green packaging makes the point that as consumers face an overwhelming set of new environmental terminology confusion abounds.  When purchasing products across (or sometimes even among) brands consumers can’t easily translate packaging claims into real-life attributes, so marketers must be the translators.  And that translation better be relevant, valid, and intelligible. 

Yes, we should strive for message recall, but if that message lacks credibility or clarity then silence would be better.  Marketers who communicate clearly, educate consumers on the environmental lexicon, and openly substantiate their claims will do well in the green revolution.  But this is a lesson to be broadly applied to the marketplace at large; it really boils down to helping consumers find solutions to their problems, whatever the color.

Two years ago when I started at Balihoo, we started a weekly walk to Starbucks every Friday morning. There were only six of us then, and I welcomed the opportunity to get some fresh air and have a chat with my five cohorts, not to mention my grande non-fat caramel macchiato. Coming from the corporate world to a start-up, this kind of “freedom” was a breath of fresh air. I enjoyed the flexibility that working for a small company afforded. The company I last worked for had a great culture early on- we were a subsidiary that was remote from headquarters, so we weren’t under the corporate microscope. We wrote our own schedules, left early on Fridays, and decorated the office with those hideous crepe paper streamers. But our site grew very quickly, and with it, our culture changed dramatically. Before we knew it, we had to bid against our teammates for work schedules, and reports held us accountable for our every move. (Okay, not everything changed. We still had the crepe paper streamers everywhere.) During our scheduled breaks I would reminisce with my coworkers about the good old days when coming to work was fun and “Big Brother” wasn’t watching.

As the Office Manager at Balihoo, I have the unique opportunity to get acquainted with each new employee when they come on board. I can tell you everyone’s birthday, and what they’ll order from Ketchum Burrito for the lunch meeting tomorrow. Since no one else is lucky enough to be in my position, the Starbucks trip gives everyone the chance to get acquainted with the new person sitting on the other side of the office, listen to anecdotes about Joe Pesci or learn the Latin root of ANY word.

By the end of 2006, Balihoo had grown to 13 employees. I remember thinking the Starbucks trip would go away some day; and I should enjoy the weekly excursion while it lasted because I’ve been conditioned to believe that with company growth comes tremendous change to the culture. I can honestly say that the only change to our culture at Balihoo has been our dogged determination to preserve it. I believe that a company’s culture is instilled early on, but maintaining it is the key.

We now have close to sixty employees, and even though there’s a Tully’s across the street from the office and a Keurig in the kitchen, I’m happy to say we still don our coats, gloves and sunglasses and trek four blocks to Starbucks every Friday.

I don’t think it’s about the coffee. I think it’s because it’s “the way”.

Ad Networks are an amazing phenomenon. Mysteriously complex to some but an amazingly simple business model. Very innovative , solving a unique market need - the need to deliver ad content across the fragmented landscape of the internet. However what was an innovative niche less than 2 years ago, has become in a very short period of time a very crowded industry with very little differentiation. In fact late last year while at Ad-Tech in New York, I would say that well over 80% of the booths were some flavor of an ad network, or at least thats how it felt. In fact for us at Balihoo that was actually a bonus in some respects. We had numerous people stop by and say they wanted to come by specifically because our offering stood out from the majority of non unique offerings at the conference.

What was a unique innovation is now a sea of monotony still with the high fees attached. Idris Mootee over at Innovation Playground has a great post that supports this. (Online Ad Networks Need Innovation - Not Just a Scale Play). He makes a great comment about the coming future of ad networks:

The idea of distributing ads online is a no brainer and it is simply scale driven. It sound like a niche but it is not, it is an industry. The continuous M&A and new players will confuse media buyers as well as advertisers. No doubt there will accelerated consolidation and we should not see more than 3 to 5 networks with 2 dominating 70% of the ad space.

He goes on to state that for other Ad-Neworks to survice they will need to innovate by finding a niche markets. This also supports the long tail theory, and as the large ad networks become just that - large mass market advertisers, the niche players who provide focus on specific customer groups will bring in higher margins. And as buyers become more focused on niche markets instead of the masses, these players will profit.

This week I was driving down a street here in Boise and noticed something interesting outside a local tanning salon.  No it wasn’t that Boise has a tanning salon, it was the message on the salon’s marquee.  It read:  “It’s Customer Appreciation Month!”   That’s it.  No witty turn of phrase.  No fiery call to action.  But an interesting read nonetheless.  It occurred to me that with all of its good intentions and warm fuzzies, this message ironically reveals a fundamental misunderstanding of what customer appreciation really is. 

Customer appreciation is not something those in business can meter out in arbitrary increments (a month here, a campaign there).  I realize the sign I came across doesn’t necessarily mean that’s what the salon was doing, but it’s done all the time… in every industry.  Focus on the customer gets relegated to a promotional campaign or a tag line; it becomes a small part of the business instead of what the business is about.

What’s foundational to all successful enterprises is genuine and consistent appreciation for the customer.  Here at Balihoo we keep customer needs foremost in our minds.  We exist to make the lives of media professionals easier.  We look at everything we do in light of that.  We don’t set aside special time to focus on our customers and then return to other concerns when the clock or calendar says so.  Our number one concern is our customers. 

Our passion is solving real problems for our customers and that’s a full-time commitment, not a part-time sign.

As Earth Day 2008 approaches, it seems like more and more companies are recognizing the need to advertise directly to the green-minded consumer. Since Boise is an outdoor recreation mecca, there are many shoppers in Boise who outwardly embody this persona – they buy food grown organically and locally, they drive fuel efficient vehicles, and spend discretionary income on toys like mountain bikes and hiking boots.

However it’s the rest of us who enjoy our environmentalism in smaller doses that are creating mainstream consumer demand to go green. According to a Mediapost article by Sarah Mahoney, market research company Mintel reports “that more than one third of adults (36%) claim to ‘regularly’ buy green products, compared with 12% just 16 months ago” while the “number of people who ‘never’ purchase green products has been cut in half” to only 10% of Americans.

As a result the list of companies advertising environmentally friendly records is growing. From GE, BP, and Ford to email signature tags reminding people everywhere to:
 Save a tree - please print only when necessary,
green advertising has become a major force. National Geographic’s “Green Guide,” a magazine for the general consumer, launched this spring while my hometown - Austin, Texas – is holding their 3rd annual Earth Day festival complete with sponsorship opportunities.

In response, green-specific advertising agencies have started to flourish like Green Team USA which promotes itself as the US’s first green communications agency. Leading media company PHD recently launched a green division – PHD Sustain – whose goals include decreasing the office’s environmental footprint and seeking out greener options for their clients.

However, a recent Nielsen report & article by AdvertisingAge warn that customers demand truly green track-records and not just “greenwashing” of a company’s image. Hopefully this new attention to the environmental consumer will continue to compel companies to discover innovative ways to reduce their impact and help clean up the environment. So maybe it’s still not easy being green, but it’s certainly now a mainstream force on the market. Happy Earth Day 2008!

Sources:
http://publications.mediapost.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=Articles.san&s=78814&Nid=40600&p=450914
http://www.thegreenguide.com/magazine
http://www.austinearthday.com
http://www.greenteamusa.com
http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/departments/features/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003729058
http://www.mediaweek.com/mw/departments/features/article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1003729057 http://adage.com/article?article_id=126067

Sports have always made for great analogies. I grew up with a father who could relate any life circumstance to the game of baseball. “Well, Betsie, choosing between eating that bowl of cereal or my liver and onions is like a center fielder who gets hit a short fly ball in a one-run ball game in the bottom of the ninth with runners on second and third and two outs. He could hold up and play it on the one-hop to allow one run but assuredly save the other, or he could lay out for it and possibly be the hero of the game.” (I told him I was going to play the one-hop and eat cereal.)

Given that my father mildly exhausted baseball as an analogy and metaphor, I’ve decided to describe the Balihoo culture through the game of soccer. About six weeks ago, nine brave Balihooers and I committed to playing in an indoor soccer league. Six grueling games later, we achieved our first “W” - that’s right, our record is five losses to one win.

We’re batting a .200; no Magglio Ordonez, but let’s not talk baseball. Our Balihoo soccer team - Balihoosiers, we call ourselves - must be commended for the style, the savvy, the culture we have brought to that indoor turf field. We show up every week on a Friday night after a rigorous week at work to play a technical game that requires sprinting seemingly endlessly after a ball that hardly ever goes out of bounds and therefore hardly ever stops moving. We sweat. We breathe awkwardly hard. We turn red in the face.

But like the culture we adhere to at the Balihoo office, my teammates and I give gallant individual efforts that have proliferated with each game and developed into teamwork. Our little soccer team is a start-up among teams who have been playing for years. In a short period of time, we have learned when to give each other support, when to run into space to create an opportunity, when to take a risky shot on goal. And last week, we learned how to win.

Albeit our last two games may result in losses considering the caliber of teams we face, we will have had a winning season by our own standards. The Balihoosiers proved that our passion, work ethic, character and sense of humor (we’re good at laughing at ourselves) can be applied in anything we tackle, or kick for that matter. Exerting ourselves in 45 minutes of play also makes for a good reason to celebrate after the game.

I had an interesting meeting this week with Nancy Napier, a business school professor from Boise State University. We discussed “aha” moments, an area of interest in Nancy’s studies. Many businesses seem to have aha’s – like when Lowe’s came to the realization that women made 80% of the buying decisions for home improvements, but home improvement stores didn’t cater to women. So, they changed store formats accordingly. Or when Starbucks realized it’s not just about the coffee, but about the customer connection. Thus, they invest disproportionately in training and service that makes the customer connection so strong.

Those were pretty major aha’s that come about only every so often. There are certainly smaller aha’s companies have on a more regular basis. My talk with Nancy made me realize I haven’t been stopping to capture the little aha’s I’ve had along the way in building Balihoo. None of these will win me a Nobel or even get me published, but hopefully they can offer you some new ways to think about things in your business, or simply corroborate what you already know.

1. Core Values should be aspirational – last year we, as a business, took a lot of time to establish and articulate our core values. We have done a good job living by them but honestly, there have been times we’ve noticed we’ve fallen short.  After those times, I was personally very frustrated and felt upset over this. I questioned the work we put in and whether we should continue to spend the time and energy to reinforce them. But, I soon realized that the Values are what guide the company and they should be a beacon toward which the company aspires; they should make people and the company stretch. If they don’t make us stretch, they’re not good enough. My take now is we shouldn’t be upset when we fall short of values, but at the same time we should never be satisfied and always stretch ourselves to get closer to the vision.

2. Hire slowly, fire quickly. I actually read this mantra in a newspaper column recently – while the words aren’t my own, I’ve realized this quip is so very true. Both actions are very hard to do in practice, especially when you’re trying to grow in a tight labor market. And, as in the previous paragraph, this mantra is something to which you should aspire. It’s not easy to just fire people and it’s very hard to walk away from a good candidate who you think might perform well but doesn’t give you that good gut feel. So, trust your instinct when hiring and only hire if you are completely excited to bring the person on board. Conversely, once you identify an under-performer, or especially someone who doesn’t live up to the core values, address the issue immediately. Of course, you have to work within laws and performance management best practices, but you should always move quickly to address when someone is not performing up to expectations.

3. He who focuses on everything, focuses on nothing. I knew this before coming to Balihoo, but I’ve never witnessed this so tangibly as I have in this small company. We are in the opportunity-laden advertising industry – it’s an industry in flux, which usually means opportunities abound. Thus, it’s easy to get misdirected by opportunities that aren’t within our strategy. At times, we have chased opportunities, but we’ve done a good job reorienting ourselves to ensure we stay on course, on target. Given the industry dynamics, this will be a continual challenge for us, but as long as we have clear goals and good direction, we will succeed.  And, as long as we as a management team realize that with such a turbulent market comes changing opportunities, we need to continually ensure our focus is right and our resources are properly allocated and not spread too thin.

The final mantra I’ve always believed is a profitable business is a successful business. Everything else we do is really just an underpinning to a profitable business, but if we do those things right – have a great culture, retain passionate employees, stay focused, be market-driven and provide true value to our customers – we will have a long-term profitable enterprise, which is what we are all committed to at Balihoo. A ha.