|
|
A True Father -Son Relay
1 Dec, 2002 By: Thomas Haire ResponseFormer track stars Sydney and Robert Yallen have turned Inter/Media Advertising into a $200 million industry giant. And the father/son team doesn't plan on giving up the race any time soon.
The Yallens believed the number of short-form spots placed, which heavily outweighs infomercials in media dollar spending, allowed them the greatest chance at striking an uncommon balance between direct response and branding. "If you're a brand and you want to go to market, you need a short-form media schedule," Robert adds. "It gives you not only reach and frequency, but also goal attainment."
 |
Inter/Media's next key client surfaced in the late '80s. "Psychiatric Institute of America was a national medical service organization with 132 centers," Robert says. Inter/Media serviced the account for six years, until the centers were sold off to other organizations.
Robert calls obtaining the centers as a client his first defining career moment. "It was a $20 million piece of business that doubled the size of our company," he says. "We assessed the needs of the client before the final meeting and realized the way to win the account was to treat each facility separately. During the meeting, Sydney said something to their chairman I'll never forget: 'If we please 80 percent of your facilities, we'll be successful.' Of course, I was ready to jump in and say we'll please 100 percent. But I learned that day from Syd that you have to set reasonable expectations for clients. Gaining that business changed our business."
Another pivotal client followed shortly thereafter. In the early 1990s, Inter/Media met with BreathAsure, which was then a struggling business of less than $1 million. "We had to go back in time to our roots - to brand building - to make it work," Robert contends. "They'd had some minimal success in radio, but they wanted us to take them to TV and then nationally to retail. As an entertainment lawyer, I was able to work out a deal with actor George Kennedy to become the spokesman."
From there, Inter/Media used direct response to fuel BreathAsure's brand-building drive and force the product into heavy retail. "We were able to help get BreathAsure into more than 100,000 stores, which was just phenomenal," Sydney says.
Robert adds, "We took them to almost $40 million in less than three years. It opened our eyes to the power of direct response and branding."
Since then, Inter/Media has found itself swamped with clients ranging from huge brands to entrepreneurial products. "If you ask us, 'Who is a DR advertiser?' The answer is every client in the world," Robert contends.
From KinderFoto and Banner Carpets to Tae Bo and Ener-X to Public Storage, Clorox and the U.S. Army, Inter/Media has served any kind of client you could imagine. But Robert's second defining moment came just last April, when the company gained planning and media stewardship duties for Ditech.com, a more than $70 million account according to industry sources. "It's one of the major companies in the media space, not just the DR space," he says. "We won it without any politics because of our total understanding of general and direct media."
The Inter/Media Difference
And that understanding is the basis of the Yallens' belief of why their company is different from many in the direct response sphere. "We're a fully integrated media and creative organization," Robert claims. "We have all our assets under one roof, from media buying through creative execution. We can take a client from idea to fruition."
It's those old roots in general media that give Inter/Media an edge when it comes to using direct response to brand products. "We hire true media planners from general agencies who understand what our clients need," Robert continues. "Inter/Media was one of the first companies to work off the now popular DRTV to retail model, starting with BreathAsure. We've taken a lot of brands to market using that methodology."
The Yallens contend the company's success is based on a core idea - smart media buying. "A lot of the stuff we do is with very smart Fortune 100 companies that are using the benefits of direct response's planning and rate obtainment to achieve an impression goal," Robert adds. "We bill ourselves as a general agency, that plans as a general agency, but executes using DR media."
Taking It to the Shelves
It is that focus that allows Inter/Media to have such success in moving DR products to retail shelves. After so many years of doing it, Robert still says it takes just two things to create a successful DR-to-retail brand: infrastructure and planning.
"If you're talking about entrepreneurial companies that aren't yet in retail, they need the infrastructure - which includes a sales force - to be successful," he says. "A lot of companies don't have that at the start. We've actually taken clients and partnered them with other clients who do have that sales organization."
The key to planning, however, is much easier to attack for even the smallest, newest company. "You have to brand-build and invest in creating your brand," Robert contends. "Sure, you can get lucky, go on TV and make a lot of money right at the start. But those kinds of winners are few and far between. You have to always plan ahead for the moment when you flip the switch to retail. Once you flip the switch, you can't take that brand back. But, if you do it right, the retail sales can dwarf your DR sales by exponential numbers."
The Yallens also say they counsel clients to be sensitive to retailers needs. "Pricing is a challenge," Sydney says. "If you lower the price on television, you could upset retailers. You must cross-promote."
Robert adds, "We counsel our clients up front - you have to be thinking of building your brand from day one, because what you do now will affect your brand down the line."
Sprinting Ahead
When asked about the future of Inter/Media, Robert speaks out immediately and decisively, like a sprinter shooting from the blocks. "We're trying to expand at a controlled rate through organic growth of our current client base and acquisition of new accounts from Fortune-100-related clients," he says. "But we're also looking at acquiring companies that fit into our culture. We're currently looking at two or three companies."
Both Yallens don't plan on hanging up their spikes in the near future. "Sure, we want to have our own exit plans," Sydney says. "But we're really enjoying the business now and we're just looking to grow it and bring even more value."
Robert adds, "We really want to become more of a media-first organization. Everything grows out of media, because it's your communication line. It's not a commodity. That's how we're positioning ourselves. We've become a brand."
The company came through a trying time in the mid-1990s after losing the Psychiatric Institute account to consolidation and losing millions of dollars to clients who didn't pay. "That was a rude awakening," Robert says. "I'm proud we came through it without bankruptcy and by paying our bills - not by closing up and coming back the next week with a new company name. To me, the integrity of sticking with the company and making sure you can look someone square in the face is vitally important."
Sydney contends, "We try to give our clients the best bang for their buck. We give them extra things over and above simply satisfying them. We exceed expectations, and added value is important to us. There are too many in this business who over-promise and never deliver."
;
1 2
