When it comes to staking out Web territory, Mark DiMassimo didn’t exactly have first-mover status. Up until a year ago, the 37-year-old founder of New York’s DiMassimo Brand Advertising wasn’t particularly interested in the Internet. A year ago, only 5 percent of his company’s billings came from dot com accounts.
“My attitude then, “ he recalls, “was ‘What’s all the fuss about?’”
Today, much of the fuss is about his 37-person ad agency, which so far this year has landed three Internet accounts- SmartMoney.com, Kozmo.com, and edu.com- worth more than $40 million, and recently added another two whose identities he declined to disclose. As a result, he expects dot coms to compromise more than 70 percent of 1999 billings, estimated to top $60 million, compared with 1998’s $25 million.
So how did DiMassimo go from Net no-show to hot dot-commodity? According to DiMassimo and his clients, it’s a combination of irreverence, prestigious offline experience- prior to founding DiMassimo in 1996, he worked at several agencies- and more irreverence.
Like many in advertising, DiMassimo has played agency hopscotch. After majoring in social science in college, he tried the life of a professional musician before staking his creative efforts on copywriting. (Today, he plays the drums to brainstorm.) After stints at BBDO and J. Walker Thompson, he moved to Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners, a firm that appealed to DiMassimo because it took chances. Kirshenbaum, for instance, had created the campaign for No Excuses jeans, hiring Donna Rice, the Money Business shipmate of former presidential candidate Gary Hart, to be its first spokesperson.
That approach matched DiMassimo’s own penchant for flouting convention, which stems in part from his religious background. He’s not just an ex-Catholic, he’s a practicing ex-Catholic. “I find that among ex-Catholics there’s a certain kind of dark, irreverent humor, because if you’re Catholic, and you’re irreverent, that’s sacrilege,” he says. “It’s a pretty serious thing to be irreverent about religious principals, so when you make that move as a Catholic, you commit to it. It affects you deep down.”
At Kirshenbaum, he eventually became creative director, where that commitment was reflected in the Citibank AAdvantage card campaign, in which one of the ads shows an engagement ring on a finger and reads, “Was it love, or was it the miles?”
In 1996, DiMassimo decided to start his own firm; one that would blend creative with direct marketing. Having worked in direct marketing during his early agency years, DiMassimo says he sensed a gap in coverage. Companies launching new brands needed an agency that understood not only how to create brand awareness, but also how to reach consumers one-on-one.
It wasn’t until last year, however, that he realized the interactive Internet was the ultimate way to integrate the two. From that point, DiMassimo went after Internet firms “with a vengeance,” as he put it, by emphasizing his direct marketing and creative experience, and the irreverence that since has been revealed in campaigns for Kozmo and edu.com.
DiMassimo says that early on in this corporate makeover he learned a lesson in dealing with Internet companies. In the traditional advertising world, agencies are known by their work. Even if it’s a bad company, the good work will stand out, he contends. But on the Internet, your dot com clients’ identities also play a role. It’s not quite, “You are what you eat,” but more, “You are who feeds you.”
Says DiMassimo: “You’re known by your clients, and you’ll be positioned very quickly by whom you work with.”
Taking this advice, DiMassimo now finds himself interviewing potential clients as if he were investigating in the Internet firms. He spends most of his initial meetings with prospective clients asking questions: What’s your business model? Who are your strategic partners? Who’s your competition? Where did you get your money? What’s your budget?
“I have to interview and it’s not because of arrogance,” DiMassimo explains. “There’s so much of this kind of work chasing agencies that if people realize you’re in this business, you’ll be inundated with suitors in this area. My advice is: Be polite, but don’t waste more than 30 seconds on the phone with anybody who doesn’t have money. You can’t help that person. Also, learn to say no to people who have money but the wrong business plan.”
DiMassimo’s belief that your current Internet company lineup influences potential clients isn’t universally shared, even by his clients. During SmartMoney.com’s short agency review- it lasted only three weeks- the company wasn’t hung up on finding an agency with an Internet track record, says Peter Jurew, general manager of SmartMoney.com. In fact, he adds, some agencies with extensive Internet work have produced lousy campaigns, something he attributes to the current market in which Internet accounts can be plucked like low-hanging fruit.
“There are agencies who are so busy that they’re not going to really change or try and reinvent themselves,” says Jurew. “They’re sticking with what they’re doing because they’re getting so much work. So we saw agencies who were good, but nothing that knocked us out. Their stuff was the stuff you see all over the place.”
SmartMoney narrowed the list to four before choosing DiMassimo; a decision Jurew says was based on the agencies penchant for irreverence, its direct marketing experience, and on DiMassimo’s work at Kirshenbaum.
How Irreverent is DiMassimo? He doesn’t go for the Outpost.com approach, the gratuitously irreverent commercial in which mice are shot out of a cannon against a brick wall and viewers are told to send complaints to Outpost.com. Instead, he strives for relevant irreverence. Some of the firm’s work for shopping and delivery site Kozmo.com is brassy bordering on vulgar, but it calls for readers to buy a product, not register complaints. For instance, DiMassimo placed Kozmo posters in bar restrooms. The ad in the men’s room reads: “That girl’s a bitch. Why don’t you go home and rent a movie?”
DiMassimo explains, “You’re in a bar, talking to some girl, and you’re getting nowhere, and then you go into the bathroom and see this sign.”
Edu.com radio spots, meanwhile, brazenly make the point that the site is for students only. The campaign uses respected figures such as a nun or a police officer to rudely explain how they are not welcome at edu.com. In one, an announcer details the daring exploits of Officer Hanrahan then states, “We couldn’t give a rat’s ass” about Hanrahan because he’s not a student.
Popular with students, the campaign was what edu.com expected from DiMassimo, says Rob Levinson, edu.com’s director of marketing communications. “Mark had an edgy quality,” he says. “He understood how to approach our market and we’re in the college space, which is even more irreverent that the rest if the Internet space.”
One thing the edu.com spots don’t do, DiMassimo notes, is explain too much- a continual problem among Internet companies. Many Internet firms are introducing entirely new products or business models and their executives are often frustrated that consumers don’t understand exactly what they do. So they become fixated on the idea that they should explain it all in their advertising. This preoccupation, DiMassimo argues, leads to misguided expenditures of time and money.
“It doesn’t matter if people understand what you do, or how you do what you do. What matters is, are people buying your product or service?” he says. “I try to get my clients out of the explaining business, which is usually a frustrating, expensive, and fruitless business in advertising, and get them into the attraction business, attracting people to their sites and learning who they are.”
It’s a preoccupation DiMassimo essentially mocks in the non-restroom potion of the Kozmo campaign. Kozmo promises to deliver orders in less than an hour, which seems an almost ludicrous boast. Naturally, consumers are keen to know who it intends to achieve this, and DiMassimo built an outdoor radio and TV campaign based on explaining the process. The catch is, the ads lie. Rocket skates, turbo go-karts, and a delivery boy shot out of a cannon are all used to describe Kozmo’s impossible mission.
This offbeat, impious approach seems particularly well suited to young Internet firms and their youthful target markets, and the willingness of Net firms to push the envelope make them fun to work with, says DiMassimo. Then again, he notes, they can be also unusually demanding, preoccupied with quick results, and more volatile than offline clients. “They can be,” he says, half-laughing, “a pain in the ass to work with.”
In some quarters, that type of comment might put people off. But on the Internet, it appears to be a rather winning approach.
DIGO, DiMassimo Goldstein, Proove, Propolis, Origami… in our WHY, we are all one and we must all be one.
Since Simon Sinek says that effective leaders start with WHY, I’m going to start off 2014 with the one word that describes the why of DiMassimo Goldstein (DIGO). That word is…
ENTHUSIASM.
This comes from Greek words meaning to get a god inside you. Think of it as having life breathed into you. The word I often use, INSPIRE is actually a synonym. It’s just the Latin version of “breath into.”
There are two ways to respond to life. One is FEAR. Often this is frozen in depression or its lukewarm cousins, boredom and ambivalence. The other direction is ENTHUSIASM. Love, curiosity, creativity, friendship, interest, affinity, enjoyment… these things come from enthusiasm.
We create enthusiasm for things, people, services, ideas, organizations and brands. And in order to do that, we first have to find it in ourselves. So, there’s your why.
We focus on growth because there are a lot of things about growing organizations that enthuse and inspire us and that challenge us to be the best we can be. And because we don’t have to fake it.
So, there’s your Day One Message.
Find, tend, teach, feed, grow, protect, challenge and expand your ENTHUSIASM this year. Tend and feed it every day. And there’s no limit to what we can do in 2014.
When it comes to marketing, how do you find the right balance between human judgment and the power of the testing and optimizing machine?
You’ll remember the story of John Henry, who competed head-to-head with a machine laying down railroad ties and hammering in spikes to secure the rail. Most people remember that John Henry beat the machine that day. Few remember that he dropped dead immediately after.
Brad Stone writes, in his definitive book on the history of Amazon.com The Everything Store, how over time and through testing it was established that automated and personalized recommendation messages outperformed the creative copy created by proud, literary editors. This ultimately led to the end of the editorial department. At that time, one of the departing editors ran this add in a local Seattle newspaper:
DEAREST AMABOT
If you only had a heart to absorb our hatred… Thanks for nothing, you jury-rigged rust bucket. The gorgeous messiness of flesh and blood will prevail.
This reminds me of a story by Ray Bradbury, set in a distant future when humans have relied on computers for so long that they have completely forgotten mathematics. Expensive computers perform complex equations to steer missiles in an interplanetary war. One day, while repairing a missile, a lowly mechanic re-discovers by-hand calculation. His eureka moment proves revolutionary. Earth’s military leaders reason that human beings are cheaper computational guidance systems for their missiles than expensive computers. Realizing the evil that has come from his wonderful discovery, the mechanic takes his own life.
Be careful what you wish for. Machines are taking jobs, because they can do certain jobs more effectively. Make your tests intelligent and extensive. Let an enlightened, holistic and clear-eyed reading of the results guide your decisions. Be willing to adapt your role and your organization to making the most of technology in producing marketing results. In doing so, you grow and you drive growth.
For more on how rigorous testing and marketing automation can help you drive growth, please write to me at my personal email mark@digobrands.com. Or call me at 646 507-5820.
Maybe we’re writing too many headlines and not enough heart-lines. Maybe we’re appealing too much to the brain and not enough to the heart, guts or gonads. Maybe that’s because we’re trying to write “headlines.”
We in advertising should know better than anyone the influence of an unconscious connotation. We should also know that the best way to overcome that unconscious tendency is to create a new one.
If we can advertise to change other people’s minds and, then we can advertise to ourselves too by choosing the words and images we use.
So here’s what I do. After I’ve been writing “headlines” for a while, I tell myself that I’m not going to write some “heartlines.” Heartlines aim to evoke emotion. While a headline might read, “5 Ways to Write Better Headlines.” Or, “Why your best headlines aren’t headlines.”
A heartline might read, “Pack more power in your headlines.” Or, “They’ll never ignore your headlines again.” Or “Imagine a world in which your ads actually get written.” Or, “Here’s more power to inspire people from the first seven words.” Or, “I used to write headlines… until I had something really important to say.”
After the well of heartlines starts to run dry, I switch to writing some “gutlines.” Gut lines aim to smack people in the gut, to first and foremost get a gut reaction. For example, “No one reads your headlines.” Or, “Your headlines are boring.”
When the gutline well starts turning up half-empty pots, I start writing “groinlines.” Groinlines are just what they sound like. They go for the general vicinity of the gonads. They can be sexy. They can be funny. They aim to turn you on or turn your head. A groinline for this post might go like this, “Headlines. Heartlines. Gutlines. Groinlines.”
Nice, I think I’ll go with that one! Glad I didn’t just write headlines. Go ahead and give it a try. Sometimes I think we are only as good as the assignments we give ourselves. By assigning more than headlines, I keep myself writing and trying new things long after most people give up.
Some of those other lines might make good Tweets or test headlines in an A/B split. This approach also speeds things up. I spent about ten minutes on the first draft of this post. And I’m going to publish it just like this. Later, I’ll share my edits and I’ll tell you about them too. If it helps you write better lines, then I’ll be happy. And that’s from the heart.
Why do most companies fizzle or flat-line, while others become truly great?
Consider a decisive moment in the history of Amazon.com.
2001 was the Waterloo for most highflying dot com companies, but it was also the year that Amazon went from good to great. Under intense pressure after an influential New York analyst had predicted the company would go under within the year, bleeding enormous amounts of cash, and with slowing growth in their core book business, Amazon had begun to flail about. But then, they not only pulled it together, they lay the groundwork for domination. Brad Stone tells the story in his authoritative book on the history of the e-commerce giant, The Everything Store.
“At a two-day management and board offsite later that year, Amazon invited business thinker Jim Collins to present the findings from his soon-to-be-published book Good to Great. Collins had studied the company and led a series of intense discussions at the offsite. “You’ve got to decide what you’re great at,” he told the Amazon executives.
Drawing on Collin’s concept of a flywheel, or self-reinforcing loop, Bezos and his lieutenants sketched their own virtuous cycle, which they believed powered their business. It went something like this: Lower prices led to more customer visits. More customers increased the volume of sales and attracted more commission-paying third-party sellers to the site. That allowed Amazon to get more out of fixed costs like the fulfillment centers and the servers needed to run the website. This greater efficiency then enabled it to lower prices further. Feed any part of this flywheel, they reasoned and it should accelerate the loop. Amazon executives were elated; according to several members of the S Team at the time, they felt that, after five years, they finally understood their own business.”
The emphasis is mine. A beautiful clarity. What can we best in the world at? What drives our economic engine and makes our flywheel turn? And what excites us enough to commit to making this work?
At DiGo, we figured out that we could be best in the world at helping mid-sized organizations grow. By providing an integrated, cross-trained team of growth masters so clients can keep their own teams lean. Which allows them to invest in and focus on growth. And by keeping the cost of testing down through no-commission direct media billing, inexpensive production, and in house programming. Then squeezing every last dollar of return through intense daily optimizations, deep and detailed dashboard reporting and analysis, and extensive use of distributed content strategies. And finally, by deploying our best creative people across all touch points, rather than separate and unequal departments for “above and below the line” media. The result is our clients show they can produce more customers and revenue per marketing dollar and they grow. And this fuels our growth – a beautiful flywheel indeed!
Let’s work on yours! Please feel free to respond directly to my personal email at mark@digobrands.com. Or call us at 646-507-5820.
There’s a tendency to lump all DRTV – short for direct response television – into one bucket. But, if categorization can spell the end of thought, this is a danger.
While there are certain principles that tie a Proactiv infomercial to a Geico commercial, there is a world of essential difference which separates them.
How to know when you are doing a Drive To Apply campaign:
1) You offer a service, membership or other engagement that requires an application.
2) Your media plan includes TV spots and/or Internet videos shorter than two minutes in order to increase reach and/or frequency.
Quicken Loans uses Drive to Apply and also various tools such as mortgage calculators to engage their audience with useful information.
eHarmony uses a Drive to Apply approach because not all members are accepted into the dating site based on an extensive personality test.
3) Your success relies on reducing the cost per successful application (sometimes called the cost-per-account.)
Here’s what you need to know about Drive to Apply:
1) A Call to Action is not enough– you need a mnemonic.
This is something to aid in memory, because a good percentage of your responses will come in long after the 30 seconds of your spot has passed. Jingles, great names, catch phrases and unforgettable demonstrations, simple and differentiating statements — all can work.
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2) Don’t go out there without a clear, different and better promise.
Progressive – We let you compare prices so you can make the best decision for you. Dollar Shave Club – It’s smart to pay a lot less for razors.
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3) Boil your differentiating promise down to a memorable, repeatable phrase.
Geico – 15 minutes can save you 15% or more on car insurance. American Express – Don’t leave home without it.
4) Keep the cost of research and testing low so you can do a lot and learn a lot.
5) Test multiple promises to find the most responsive.
6) Test multiple expressions of the promise.
Changing a single word can sometimes increase response by hundreds of percentage points. For the Citibank AAdvantage Card, when we changed the word “travel” to the word “miles” we increased response and conversion by 100% to 200% across the board, which helped grow that business by many multiples.
7) Keep the cost of production down so you can test a lot of different creative approaches to deliver the promise on an ongoing basis.
8) Remember that you must break through.
You must touch a nerve. You can’t bore your way to the hall of fame in this business.
9) Brand is not something you invest in or slow down for.
When you’re doing it right, brand is what you build with every sale.
10) Keep the cost of media down by not paying commissions improves your results before you even start.
11) Extend your media dollar by integrating viral, digital and social content that builds word-of-mouth and sales.
(For example, Dollar Shave Club closes more than half of their new accounts through viral videos.)
Growth. Improbable, competition-threatening, critic-silencing growth is our aim and our comfort zone. It is what our clients have come to expect. It starts with a brand story so large that the only way to live it out is to grow. And then a plan. We help you define what growth means for your organization. We help you to quantify and measure it. We help you build and test a theory of growth. Then, optimize it and roll it out. Rinse and repeat. At DIGO, the entire organization shares a singular measure of success — we succeed when our clients grow.
Most people don’t know that Business Insider publishes an annual list of their picks for “the sexiest advertising executives.” This is probably a good thing.
After a short discussion, we at DiMassimo Goldstein opted out of the story and insisted that the editors of Business Insider remove us from the list.
Ultimately, a horror of objectifying advertising executives and the potential harm to the reputation of our industry outweighed our sincere pleasure in dominating the draft list, holding sixteen of the top twenty places and a healthy percentage of the remaining rankings as well.
We take the compliment.
But, at the end of the day, our sexiness is not what we sell. We sell our ability to help clients grow. The sexiness is really more like customer service… or atmosphere.
So, once again, thanks Business Insider. But no thanks. We will focus on making it with our brains.
For those who want to see the runner ups who, due to our decision to abstain, ended up on the list. Here you go!
