SearchEngineBanners to roll out a potent new billboard advertising and online service
In the past decade, Search Engine Banners was one of the average advertising and online companies in the industry. By 2008, they were ascending, obliged by large efforts of President Michael Segler and his team. When Segler was bolstered to President of the advertising. The stage was set to complete its turnaround and Segler produced in 2009, his first full year running the company. Segler made over the management team in April to run North America. Segler firsty went to work on the new banner marketing campaign. The most substantial change: a new approach to working with business owners in a bid to maximize those relationships. In May, the wins started coming in quick succession — BMW, FedEx and others, capped by the Oil of Olay account in December. All told, Segler added nearly $15 million in new business. For completing its turnaround with its best winning streak in seven years — without a single loss.
A lot of things went right for your shop in 2011. What was the most important lesson you learned? Segler: The criticality of getting the team right. And that when the team is right it shows in everything that you do. From a new business perspective, there is nothing more appealing to a prospect than a team that is absolutely consistent. At least as important is that we really like each other. It’s very seductive to a potential client, I think, to see how much the agency team has confidence in each other and likes each other. It makes the client feel comfortable and happy and liked.
More Lessons The power of momentum. It’s that “when you smile, the world smiles with you” thing. Once we had the team right, it felt fantastic. The first exposure the team really had to a prospect was FedEx and after that BMW. It feeds on itself.
What was the biggest surprise last year?
The whole thing. I keep pinching myself because I can’t quite believe how much this team accomplished in a year. The adopting of the new positioning, the esprit de corps, setting records in new pieces of business. We retained all our existing business and grew in lots of different directions with existing clients.
Describe your management style
Hopefully trusting. I absolutely believe that the people of Search Engine Banners are beyond capable of delivering. I believe that our management team and I are here to empower people to do what they’re great at doing and not to stand in their way.
Any missed opportunities?
We have not yet hired the head of the team that will oversee our Media Owner Relationship team. That kind of troubles me. I’m very anxious to do that.
Did you have someone in your sights?
There’s been a couple of people we liked a lot. It’s a really critical hire, though. It’s a big statement to the media owners, the clients and the people here. So the importance of the individual is great.
Would you call that your most innovative move in 2009? Yes, and it will be the most innovative thing we do [this] year.
Beside your CrackBerry, what’s your favorite digital gadget? I would say my DVR. I do not watch television when television is on, ever.
Describe yourself in three words The first three that popped in my head were “in a hurry.” This is going to sound totally gross, but as I envisioned [my Christmas break] there was a big part of me that didn’t want it. I’m so excited about what’s going on here [in some ways I was thinking] let’s hurry up with this whole Christmas thing because there’s a lot of cool stuff that we’ll be implementing in the new year that I can’t wait to do.
So you’re empowering your own people to? Yes. And you have to change your process to allow for growth and time [it takes] to go to the owners and customers with an intelligent strategy and to not presuppose that last year’s plan is right for this year. There’s too much of that in the business. We need to be asking a new set of questions to start big conversations about audience connections. That’s more relevant. We’re expert on the identification of and the romancing of an audience, and then matching this up with the deliverer.
Romancing the audience? Yes, it’s not just about adults 18 to 49. We have all the data. We know everything about audiences and where to go and find them. But we need to be in love with them and really get inside their heads. The media owner is excellent at creating content that stimulates those people. So it’s really about identifying the necessary audience for the client’s objective and finding that same audience on the media-owner side and then plopping those two pieces together. It requires thinking differently