Boise is consistently rated as one of the best cities to live and work by many national publications. Today, Boise received two notable accolades:

- Kiplinger’s Magazine ranked Boise fourth in its 2008 top spots to live in the US. The magazine noted Boise for its “creative class” of people as well as the burgeoning wine-making industry just to the west of Boise. (See article)

- The Brookings Institution ranked Boise as the city with the 5th lowest carbon footprint in the US (See article). We at Balihoo do our best to be green (see one of our previous blog posts), partly evidenced by the number of people who ride their bikes to work!

In April, 2008, Balihoo conducted a survey of over 100 media buyers and planners to help us fine tune our product offering. 

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Conducted in April, 2008, the survey polled media planners and buyers’ attitudes regarding their day-to-day workflow. Questions ranged from the importance of different data sources to the process of developing and issuing RFP’s to the post-RFP activities of generating insertion orders and flowcharting. 

“Media planners and buyers are faced with an ever-growing landscape of advertising options,” explained Pete Gombert, Balihoo CEO. “However the survey results demonstrate that the software and processes currently utilized are forcing well-paid planners and buyers to waste valuable time cutting and pasting Excel and Word documents together.”

Gombert continued, “By using more sophisticated tools for building consideration sets and issuing and analyzing RFP’s, media professionals are able to streamline their workflow, allowing them to shift more efforts from administrative work to high-value strategic services which benefits both the agency and the advertiser.”

Survey results highlights include:

• Data is important. Those surveyed agreed that building a robust consideration set was the first step in making an intelligent advertising purchase. Ranked as “very important” data points were: a “comprehensive list of media properties” (77%), “publisher-supplied data” (75%) and “audience measurement data” (73%).
• Aggregating data is painful. Respondents are relatively satisfied when it comes to issuing RFPs. It’s aggregating and comparing what comes in from ad sales reps that makes their jobs a pain, as 80% noted that they are either “not at all satisfied” or only “somewhat satisfied” with this step in the process.
• Although unhappy with the process, few use an RFP tool. The vast majority of respondents (80%) are not using a software tool as part of their RFP process. Many of those surveyed are using Excel, though they don’t classify it as a “software tool.”
• Open to change. Media planners and buyers are still optimistic and ready to embrace new tools that can help them perform their jobs more effectively. Specifically, 61% are “definitely willing” to try a solution that combines a comprehensive, searchable database of advertising opportunities with built-in RFP functionality.

Lisa Weinstein, Managing Director, Mindshare Chicago and member of Balihoo’s Senior Advisory Council, added, “At Mindshare, we think it’s critical that we continue to look to drive more efficiency into the media buying process – using better tools and data to create more effective media plans that increases the return on advertising dollar for our clients.” 

“While it’s important for agencies to make smart investments in media planning and buying tools, we should also push media owners to provide intelligent platforms for evaluating, and purchasing, their advertising inventory,” Weinstein concluded.

Our own in-house author and COO, Vincent Martino (he also wrote The Marine Corps Way), has been writing a series of articles for our local newspaper regarding running a start-up business.  Below is the second in the series:

Starting up: Got vision? You need it to attract talented employees 

Stock options have lost some of their luster since the Internet bubble, when companies could attract talent through the hope of a quick payday. A combination of wages and stock options was a great hiring incentive for eager and talented workers who believed those options could turn them into millionaires overnight.

That irrationality is gone, but it is still very realistic to expect people to be motivated by options if they believe in the vision of a company and its ability to achieve it. Of course, with options comes risk, so getting others to deliberately assume risk starts with the leader’s ability to create and sell a vision.

Quite honestly, early in my career I didn’t rank vision as a top leadership attribute. I remember sitting in my first MBA leadership class when the professor asked us to list the top three qualities of “great leadership.” Having just exchanged my Marine Corps captain’s bars for the “business casual” uniform of a full-time MBA student, I listed the standby leadership attributes of integrity, leadership by example, and unselfishness.

Once we students finished and the professor put “vision” atop the list, however, I was nonplussed. Based on my experience, I surely knew more about leadership than this tweedy academic - vision was important, but not a requisite attribute.

Now, with experience in the business world, I’ve realized the importance of vision. For entrepreneurs, vision is an absolute necessity in any venture. A new venture, after all, is little more than an idea, and successful entrepreneurs are able to transform their vision into reality by getting others - preferably incredibly talented, self-driven people - to commit their time and sweat to it.

Stock options serve to support the visionary by providing a low-risk, low-cost way of giving employees ownership.

Further, options help attract and retain people who see value well beyond a regular paycheck - people willing to work for less salary in exchange for a potential big payday later. This is important because in many startups, especially ones based on intellectual capital, salary can exceed 90 percent of costs, so having people motivated by options can be critical to growth.

At Balihoo, a Boise startup that last year launched an online search platform for media buying, I have learned firsthand how to build a business based on vision and collective ownership. Our CEO, Pete Gombert, set the initial vision for Balihoo and has been a great example in this regard. We give all our full-time employees options and have attracted incredibly talented people with a shared goal of building a great company. Here are some key lessons I’ve learned along the way:

Start by painting a picture of the future. Color it with your passion and fill it with market data. The smart people you want to recruit will believe you only if your vision is well-researched and plausible.

Next, give employees ownership through stock options. Show them the part they can play in creating the future and be transparent with your fellow owners about the company’s results, opportunities and challenges. They will appreciate it and work hard to lift the company during the downs and extend gains during the ups.

Next, educate them on the mechanics and potential value of options. Options can be complex to understand and value, so a little education goes a long way.

Over time, reward strong performers with more ownership by implementing a performance management system that measures not only past results, but employees’ potential to contribute to long-term growth. Part of this system should be an options bonus plan, which gives employees confidence they can earn more options based on performance.

Finally, communicate, communicate, communicate. Periodically repaint the picture - the fog of everyday tactics will sometimes obscure the grand vision, so make clear the mile markers that define your company’s journey.

If you are able to do the above, your chances of attaining your vision are greatly increased. Your company will be buttressed by incredibly motivated employees who act like owners, because they are.

These are questions that invariably get asked by just about anyone who interacts with Balihoo for the first time, be it an interviewee, potential customer, partner, or someone who just heard about us. I’ve conducted five interviews so far this week, and every interviewee literally asked how we came up with the name and what it meant. Given this, I thought I’d take a moment to tell you a little bit about our name.

We originally named the company “Ballyhoo”…yes, it’s a real word and it means “exaggerated or sensational promotion or publicity”, often used in the context of marketing or advertising. So, we adopted the name as a bit of a play on words given our roots in the advertising industry. As happens more often than not these days, when we tried to get the domain name ballyhoo.com it was taken. We tried to buy it, but the guy who owned it didn’t want to sell it, even though it seemed like a business he was running from his garage. So, we alternatively came up with Balihoo, a simple bastardization of the word Ballyhoo, and made certain the domain was available this time.

The origin of the word is unknown, but - for any of you Broadway junkies out there - its most notable use was probably in the long-running Broadway play 42nd Street in the song “Lullaby of Broadway” (see lyrics here).

As you can see in our logo, our mascot - a small white dog named Scout - is howling something sensational for everyone to hear - otherwise known as “Ballihoo-ing”. We love our name and our logo, and hope you do too!

One of our core values at Balihoo is “work-life passion”.  What that means to us is that everyone that works here not only has a passion for the work we do for our customers but for our interests outside of Balihoo.  I’ve only been with Balihoo since February, and one of the aspects of the company that truly inspired me to come aboard is the company’s culture.  We’ve all heard numerous spiels about culture and employee appreciation throughout our careers whether at our own companies or from others.  In the main, what companies promise and what employees experience are more different than alike.  I realize it’s a difficult goal to reach: create and maintain an environment where the folks that work at a company actually enjoy the experience.   So before interviewing for my position here at Balihoo I reviewed the entire site (and blog) making note of all the places where I could get an inkling as to what working here would actually be like.  What I read, I liked. 

And Balihoo has certainly delivered on culture.  Remember that particular core value I mentioned?  Well, that value is spotlighted around here on what we call a Passion Day.  It’s a day when someone in the office gets to share with the team a passion they have outside of Balihoo.  Now Passion Day is a bit of a misnomer because we don’t take an entire day to indulge our outside interests, but we do take a couple of hours.  This week my guitar teacher   Ben Burdick helped me share my passion for music.  It was a fantastic experience that folks here are still talking about (thanks again Ben!) and will be for some time.  For me, of course, I was as thrilled as could be – I got to listen to a gifted musician and friend share something very personally meaningful to me.  What also struck me is that this is the experience I was told Balihoo offered… and it’s true.  How often are we sold on certain aspects of an experience and yet find ourselves sorely disappointed?  Certainly more often than we’d care to remember.  Promises delivered are unfortunately rare in this world. 

As I write this, on a Friday evening at the end of another busy week, a few of my fellow Balihooers are setting up a projector in our main room to view a 16mm print of an original Star Trek episode.  Yes, this is a technology company.  But it’s also a company where we all truly enjoy outside interests and sharing those interests with each other.  For me what’s even more meaningful is that it’s a company where I can expect such things to happen because what I’ve been told and what I experience actually are one and the same. 

Even if you don’t follow the media market place closely, it would be hard to miss the influx over the past few years of innovative, targeted and specialized ways in which to convey an advertising message. As a captive audience taking a ride in a New York taxi cab you can’t escape the weather forecast, the state of the economy or all of the disastrous scenarios in which you may need a Panasonic tough book.  Well placed indeed – the way New Yorkers drive – we and our electronic paraphernalia are lucky to arrive at our destinations in one piece.

Is this just a big city phenomenon? No such luck. In the peace and tranquility of the mountains in Sun Valley, Idaho, those giant pylons that anchor the chair lift into the mountain are now prime real estate for, well yes, a real estate ad.  Who wouldn’t want a second home in Sun Valley, and at that very moment, 100 feet in the air, swinging your skis, you are ready to pack it all in and tell the rat race to carry on without you.

The explosion of infinite advertising placement opportunities is not lost on today’s savvy advertiser. Consequently, the challenge to find and evaluate these new options is passed to the agencies that service them. No longer is it acceptable to deliver last year’s campaign plan of the same tried and tested media mix – or not at least without first considering a plethora of alternative options. Democracy is indeed at play.  And with democracy comes abundant new opportunity.

To be considered as an alternative vote, media owners must be seen and have their stories heard. In a recent market survey conducted by Balihoo, we asked professional media buyers and planners to define their satisfaction with their current media planning and buying process. A staggering four out of five respondents told us that they were not at all or only somewhat satisfied with the ability to search for or identify media properties. Furthermore, three-quarters o f the respondents stated that they felt the same lack of satisfaction with their ability to find Media sales rep contacts for considered properties.  

We don’t just let the statistics do the talking. Here at Balihoo, we have a dedicated data services team who spend a great deal of their waking hours using software based tools and hard manual labor to identify new media opportunities to continue to build out our 195,000-strong media property database. To build out media profiles, our software crawls web sites for descriptions, sales rep contact information, advertising opportunities, audience reach, media kits and more.  Our doggedly enthusiastic team just completed the mammoth task of profiling the geographic reach of all of these properties, allowing media buyers to search for advertising options by state, DMA, county, city and even zip code.

The conclusion: the media discovery business is not for the faint hearted.  In the Web 2.0 era, almost every media property has a website – the perfect repository for all of the above information. Yet, in many cases, it is a near impossible feat to figure out if advertising opportunities exist, let alone how to contact someone to find out what, when and how? And the geographic reach? Audience demographics? Forget about it.

In today’s fast paced, constantly fragmenting, highly competitive market place, if you don’t make yourself available, soon you won’t be.  Balihoo was built on this premise: to enable media planners and buyers to identify and consider the breadth and depth of everything that is available in the media market.

The opportunities are infinite. To be considered, sometimes you have to go above and beyond.

This artitcle at Ad Age is interesting, P&G Lets Consumers Act as Media Planners. 

Ad Age removes public access to its articles after a week, so let me quickly summarize the article:

Basically, P&G has some made what some would consider “controversial” media buys including sponsorship of hip-hop programs on MTV and BET that, according to a consumer advocate group, are “laced with profanity, liberal doses of the “N” word, and scenes the group believes objectifies women.”  Additionally, P&G sponsors “As The World Turns” which has recently featured fairly passionate kisses between daytime TV’s only only gay couple. 

In response to negative backlash regarding some of the content of these programs, P&G has set up a series of options on its main consumer telephone line asking for consumers feedback - either negative or positive - regarding their involvement with this type of programming. 

We’ve seen “the consumer in control” with creative applications, and how they consume media, but this now pushes us into the realm of giving the consumer the ability to “media plan” for brands also.  I think some in the industry will be frightened by this type of behavior, however I think it’s a fantastic example of a brand taking the opportunity to truly listen to their customer base - it will be interesting to see P&G’s response to the activity on their phone lines. 

Another interesting side-plot to this story - the main concerns here about content were raised by the consumer advocate group “Enough is Enough”.  They are actively encouraging their members to to contact P&G to vocalize their dislike of this type of programming.  However, on the other side of the arguement, influential bloggers such as PerezHilton.com and huffingtonpost.com are also encouraging their readership to contact the packaged goods giant to show their support for this type of programming.  Historcally, we’ve seen the consumer groups have the ability to drive change in advertisers with their ability to organize and motivate large groups of people to action - however here we have an opposing view with just as much (if not more) power to organize and voice an opinion also. 

So - what’s your opinion?  How much influence should customers have over the media choices made by brands?

Our own in-house author and COO, Vincent Martino (he also wrote The Marine Corps Way), has been writing a series of articles for our local newspaper regarding running a start-up business.  Below is the first in the series: 

Starting Up: Hiring the right person is crucial to a startup’s success 

The two determining factors of a startup’s success are typically the idea and the people. While one can’t predict or control when the idea is developed, a fledgling company has full control over the people it hires.

Management gurus have long extolled the virtue of “getting the right people on the bus,” and we all know there is great cost in hiring the wrong people. One of the chief culprits in the demise of small companies is hiring people who don’t fit into an organizational culture.

At Balihoo, a Boise technology startup, we’ve consistently hired at a pace slower than planned. This has inexorably left us stretched, which at times led us to question whether we were being too exacting in our hiring process. The answer has been a resounding no. Though we oftentimes waited longer than expected, once we found the right person we were always glad we waited.

We have a high bar at Balihoo. We have developed and adhere to a multipart hiring process that looks at different aspects of an applicant: skills, experience, intelligence, etc. But we abide by one absolute: Ensure the candidate will fit into our organizational culture. We perform our due diligence to ensure we are hiring the most talented people. However, we value organizational culture fit most highly.

Obviously, to screen for organizational fit when hiring, a company must first understand, then articulate its culture. We have taken the time at Balihoo to delineate our values and identify the competencies that lead to success, which define our culture and guide our decision making.

Through this process, I’ve seen many applicants with great referrals who are eventually declined. Admittedly, at times we have gut-wrenchingly tried to figure out why, but we ultimately accept that they simply don’t fit into our team.

Here are some other important tips I’ve learned:

• Build a good hiring process and trust it. If someone doesn’t do well within your process, don’t try to rationalize why.

• Make people “wow” you and don’t settle. If you don’t say, “I really want to hire that person,” you shouldn’t hire that person.

• Don’t hire people for skills alone. If you are impressed with someone’s skills, but don’t see an organizational fit, don’t hire the person. You can always contract for skill; it’s less expensive in the long run.

• Quality begets quality. Hire the highest-quality people from the outset, then have them do the interviewing.

A few important things to realize as consequences of following this advice: First, expect to be stretched, which is actually a normal and healthy predicament for a startup. While being overextended is untenable in the long run, in short spurts it allows your employees to expand into new roles and experiences.

Second, develop a solid outsourcing competency. I don’t mean off-shoring, necessarily, but rather the ability to manage any third parties. This allows you to temporarily fill open positions while you search for the right person for your team.

Third, valuing organizational culture most highly means sometimes you might sacrifice experience or skill for fit, which implies that you will need to invest in training and mentoring to round out the skills of some employees. If you are getting the right people on board and expect them to stick around, you must be willing to make a correspondingly high investment in them.

Proactively addressing these consequences will allow you to be appropriately judicious in your hiring process. Remember, there are high costs in hiring the wrong people. Startups have little room to absorb these costs, so articulate and trust your organizational culture, and based upon this, patiently select the right candidates to create the team you want for the long run.

Vincent Martino is Balihoo’s chief operating officer. He can be reached at vmartino@balihoo.com.Starting Up is a series published on Fridays. The columns grew from discussions between the Statesman and local tech and entrepreneurial leaders and are coordinated by Julie Howard, a specialist for the Idaho Office of Science and Technology. Reach her at julie.howard@commerce.idaho.gov.