Unlimited name Touchpoint as one of
NZ's 'coolest companies'
Unlimited
- 01 February 2004
When David Ogilvy coined the phrase “fifty per cent of my
marketing budget is wasted — I just don’t know which
fifty”, it seems he only knew the half of it. Commenting on
marketing spend this year, Unilever chairman Niall Fitzgerald
said the number was more like 90%. In other words, there’s
an opportunity for better marketing analysis.
Enter Touchpoint, a tiny software company gnawing away at that
very task in Auckland. Born from the remnants of the 90s high-flying
web design firm WebMasters, the company hit about $1 million in
annual revenue in just two years and is set for global expansion.
“We reckon we could grow about two or three times our size
in New Zealand but that’s not what we want. We really think
this has global application,” says founder and the brains
behind the software Steve Shearman.
Shearman’s no newbie. Along with business partner Frank van
der Velden, Shearman and others sold WebMasters to Advantage Group
in 1999 for $3 million in cash and $5 million in shares. Advantage
immediately did a spectacular dot-bomb but the pair had already
moved on, founding Brave New World, an amalgam of branding and design
consultancies that now occupies a smart-looking corner of Parnell’s
artsy Textile Centre.
It too is expanding, recently hiring a heavyweight creative director
from Argentina and former Air New Zealand marketing boss Mike Peppers.
But in a quiet corner of the office, the bookish Shearman is intent
on developing a solution to the World’s Big Marketing Problem.
The software is a no-brainer, really. In the past, marketers have
thrown an ad on TV and hoped for the best. These days there are
a lot more tools at their disposal — databases, email, telephone,
direct mail, web sites, targeted media — and as many ways
of combining them as you can imagine. Shearman’s software
essentially manages the integration and reports back on effectiveness.
“Touchpoint is finally starting to give marketers the sort
of transparency and accountability they want from their spending,”
says Shearman.
How so? Well, take Yellow Pages. Using the Touchpoint system, Yellow
Pages was able to trial a combination of email, website and telephone
sales to upsell its customers to a higher listing. Using real-time
tracking of the campaign’s effectiveness Touchpoint could
tweak the offers and the combination of media to increase efficiency.
“Our results had an outstanding return on investment of 175%
and target revenue exceeded our goals by 21%,” says Yellow
Pages product manager Lynne LeGros.
As for the business, Touchpoint is fobbing off requests from clients
in Sydney and Hong Kong. “The temptation is to say yes to
everything that comes your way, but we want to focus on just a few
things and get them right,” says van der Velden. The right
thing they reckon is to have a “shrink wrap” product
that can be managed over the web. It means a corporate sitting in
Hong Kong, or wherever, should be able to run the product without
further input from Touchpoint.
It saves on expensive overseas offices and employees. But it does
restrict who can use your product because customers need to have
an existing IT infrastructure and staff that can easily handle it.
Shearman says the first targets are corporates with sophisticated
marketing departments who can use the software internally. Next
are resellers such as advertising agencies looking to add value
to their client’s business. One thing’s for sure, if
they can tell Niall Fitzgerald which 50% of his budget went where,
and how to use it better, there will be no shortage of marketers
beating the path to Parnell.
Unlimited
- 01/02/2004
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