Birthday Gift 1 of 3

Well, it was the 10th anniversary of my 29th birthday on Friday and I had quite a big weekend. Plus, it was also my first official week not belonging to corporate America since I was a collegian at Rutgers College of Engineering. And, that reminds me of a story.

When I was a Senior I was asked to talk to incoming freshmen on how great it was being an industrial engineer during The Introduction to Engineering Course. So, I showed up in my Bruce Springsteen t-shirt and proudly proclaimed –

“Being an industrial engineer is great. It will help me pursue a career in business and marketing; plus it is a great background for getting your MBA.”

Well, the department head, Dr. Elsayed A Elsayed was not too happy with me because I probably set recruiting into the department back a few years. However, that was truth and it helped me understand analytics, numbers, and problem solving better than the average marketing manager.

Anyway, back to my original story. Since it was my birthday and I love getting gifts, I thought for once I could turn around and give a gift back to you. That gift is the secret of how Harrisdirect was listed as the 17th largest advertiser in the United States. As you can see from the link, HD was sandwiched between the University of Phoenix and Earthlink, and according to eMarketer, spent $3.7 million in September 2005. Now, that's where the fun begins.

As anyone will tell you, the reported media spend is often incorrect, but since it is wrong for everyone, you usually can believe the rank order. However, the number and the rank order were wildly wrong for HD. I can’t tell you what was actually spent, but what anyone else that was remotely close to the program could tell you, is that our online marketing program was one of the greatest facades and best-kept secrets around.

Now, I don’t like to kiss and tell and some things I can’t tell, but what I will lay out is part of my personal media strategy honed over buying a lot of online media since oh, about 1999. It is so simple and based on good problem solving and logic that even Dr. Elsayed A Elsayed would be proud that I put some industrial engineering skills to good use.

My personal strategy came down to three basic understandings of how buying on the internet really works:

1. Understanding audience duplication rates


2. Building trusted relationships with your media partners


3. And, volume discounts, baby

Well, that’s it for today. You’ll have to tune back for Part 2 because I want to keep my blog shorter and I like to lengthen my birthday celebration. So,

PardonMyFrench,

Eric