A brand we built from nothing, and a fascinating case
study of extreme growth.
It's not often you get in on the ground floor with a future
market leader. But that's what happened when we partnered with
People PC. In 2003, the company was in trouble. During the dot-com
boom, they had provided Internet access to corporations like Delta
and Ford. But when these customers backed out, PeoplePC was left
with no viable business model.
We conducted extensive research into the ISP market. And we
discovered that consumers were disaffected by the high prices and
poor service of the major players. We also evaluated PeoplePC's
technical infrastructure to understand how it could best be
leveraged.
Based on these learnings, we created a "little guy" positioning
for the brand with an animated character named "Stick Man." He
became a nationally recognized icon in the fight against the big
ISPs, with their poor service and high prices. On a parallel track,
we migrated sign-ups from phone to online—which made
subscriber acquisition more efficient and immediately impacted the
bottom line.
Our initial testing revealed three primary channels that would
meet the desired cost of acquisition and ROI: direct mail, DRTV and
shared mail. We optimized our TV campaign for length, station, and
daypart. Our testing and refinement resulted in a continuous TV
presence for over 200 consecutive weeks.
In a typical month, our efforts for PeoplePC reached over 100
distinct list targets and included testing on 6 to 10 different
campaign executions. The brand grew. And so did our marketing reach
as Stick Man went everywhere.
Through continued testing we found new growth in the Hispanic
community. Stick Man's simplicity made the transition into the
Hispanic market seamless. And within 5 years, this market
represented 60% of all new subscribers.
In just over 3 years, Advertising Age recognized
PeoplePC as a "power brand." More importantly, PeoplePC grew from
zero customers to 1.5 million in that same time. Virtually all
those customers were acquired via Direct Partners'
campaigns—and as a result of our business partnership,
subscribers reached over 2,400,000, yielding annual revenue of
$288MM.
Not bad for the little brand with the little stick man.