MarketSource Growth Strategy: Executive Review

Cropped photo of my dad's business card.

This is part 2 detailing my career. You can read about the first half of my career at Fortune 100 Career Journey Narrative Insights.

While I was performing strategic planning sessions in Peru, Brazil and Argentina for Warner Lambert and eventually American Express, a young Arizona University college student named Marty Levine was majoring in business. Marty was from East Brunswick, New Jersey where he had a neighbor named Ron Garretson. Mr. Garretson had recently retired as the college bookstore manager for CCNY (City College of New York). He had come up with a business idea to give students a pocket planner that contained bookstore policies and a calendar. The cover had a picture of CCNY and there were pictures of bookstore employees.

University of Colorado Bookstore entrance. Picture taken complements of my niece, Brinley, who is just finishing up her second year.

The students were handed the planner twice a year when they purchased their books at the beginning of each semester. Garretson called the pocket planner Term Planner, and his new company was Term Planner Inc. He had 5,000 printed and was happy to learn that students thought them as helpful and used them to write important dates for exams and parties. Term Planner was free to students. Garretson passed the idea along to his colleagues at NYU, Fordham, St. Johns and Brooklyn College and soon he was reaching a circulation of 50,000 planners. He got the idea to go out and solicit advertisers who were willing to pay $1,000 to get their restaurants, hair salons and clothing stores to advertise in the planners.

When Marty Levine came home for spring break he ran into Garretson who told him he had retired and had started the Term Planner business. Marty was intrigued and asked Garretson if he could work for him and get business at Arizona University in Tucson and some of the universities in Northern Arizona such as Arizona State in Tempe, Arizona. Garretson agreed and they worked out a commission structure. So, for four years Garretson and Marty built up a business that had a circulation of 500,000 students and a one-page advertisement of $12,000 per page or about $120,000 per issue — $240,000 per year. Garretson was 70 years old at this point and wanted to move to Florida. Marty said he would like to buy Term Planner Inc. from Garretson, and they worked out a price of $300,000 and a payout of $50,000 a year for 6 years. The planner was printed by a local East Brunswick printer named Jack McNeil. Marty and Jack became real good friends and Marty asked Jack if he would like to work for him. Jack agreed and the two of them built the business to $500,000 and it had an office on Summerhill Road in East Brunswick.

If you missed Tony's other recent posts, you can find them here at Papa's Corner.

Meanwhile, it was 1981 and Tony Fiore was searching for an elusive job. The country was in one of its worse recessions in history; companies were cutting employees; hiring freezes were prevalent and employees were hanging onto their jobs and not even considering moving on to a new company. The only difference between current times and 45 years ago is that AI has compounded the issue and the term "Job Huggers" has emerged.

As I mentioned in Part I my search was concentrated on finding a smaller situation. Back then there were no emails, text messages or cell phones. Resumes and cover letters were sent by mail and rejection letters were received by mail. Usually on Sunday the newspapers posted job openings... mostly low level. I was surprised to see one that said Vice President Marketing, Term Planner, Inc.

I sent my resume and cover letter to Martin D. Levine, President Term Planner Inc.

I got a call from Marty who said he would like to interview me for the job. So I drove to East Brunswick and entered a building that had the names of two dental practices, a law firm and a realtor. There was also the name Term Planner Inc. on the directory.

Product shelf at University of Colorado Bookstore. Back when Marty started distributing the Term Planner, these products were not available for sale in bookstores.

I walked up the stairs and into a small office where I met Marty and Jack. They asked why someone who had big titles in big companies would be interested in such a small situation. I was honest and told them the market was very bad, and I was having a tough time even getting an interview. I told them I had a number of friends I had worked with or for that I had a shot at getting a job, but their companies had hiring freezes. I admitted it would be tough having a big office in New York with a view of the Statue of Liberty and New York Harbor and having a much smaller office with a view of a parking lot but I wanted a smaller situation. I asked Marty how big his company was and he said you are looking at it with Jack and I. "What are your plans to grow the business" I asked. Marty said the college market is much larger than people think — 3,000 colleges and universities with 7,000,000 students — all hard to reach through conventional advertising because they are in class, working part time jobs, playing sports and going to parties. They watch about 10% of the TV their counterparts who do not go to college watch. Jack and I are thinking of launching a college magazine to attract bigger advertisers such as P&G, IBM and Kraft.

If you are interested in the job why don't you think about our college magazine idea and come back and we can talk more seriously about the job.

I agreed and I went to the library and got a crash course on the college market. I got my information from magazines such as Advertising Age and Promo Magazine. I learned that the 7,000,000 full time students spend about $300 a month on non-book items, such as snacks, movies, apparel and sporting equipment. That translates to about 250 billion dollars in non-essential spending a year. Much larger than I thought. I decided to go to my biggest strength — strategic planning and I got down to the basics of for the MarketSource growth strategy.

1. Existing products in an existing market

2. New products in an existing market

3. Existing products in a new market

4. New products in a new market

   
   

The highest probability of success is with an existing product in an existing market. What can be done to get more out of Term Planner. The answer was simple — increase circulation and increase the page rate.

The idea of a college magazine is a much lower probability of success. First off there were 5 other college magazines targeting the college market. Second, the cost of a college magazine would be in the hundreds of thousands and unless there was a unique point of difference why would an advertiser be interested.

I met Marty and Jack for a second time, and they were anxious to hear what I had to say about the college magazine. I told them I didn't think they would like what I had to say and it would probably cost me the job, but I had to say it and also show them my strategic plan for their business.

The plan's main elements were as follows:

1. Table the idea for the magazine

2. Double the circulation of Term Planner

3. Leverage the college bookstore by getting them to stock the advertised product thereby creating a unique point of difference

4. Change the name of the company. Term Planner is too limiting

5. Hire a college store specialist to recruit new stores to increase circulation

Marty took the plan and said he would get back to me.

He did and offered me the job but for half of what I had been making at American Express. He added one caveat and that was if I could get the company from $500,000 to $5,000,000 in revenue, he would give Jack and I equity in the company. That was enough for me to accept the job and the adventure began.

The first step was to hire Chuck Kochan to recruit store managers to distribute Term Planners. Next, I went out with Jack and Marty on sales calls to solicit advertisers. I called on everyone I knew from the four large companies I had previously worked for and got amazing results.

In six months, Chuck with Marty's help was able to double the Term Planner circulation and we were charging $30,000 a page. We were also successful in getting the stores to clear out some textbooks and make room for new distribution of General Foods International Coffee, Hershey Chocolate, Trident Gum and other products. My friends from my other companies came through since we had a good story to sell in that college students had money but were hard to reach and we could get their product in the college store — a new channel of distribution.

Now we were ready for our next product launch.

Step II: A new product in an existing market — but it wasn't a magazine — it was a box of samples called Campus Trial Pak.

A box of samples is a win/win/win formula. We go to samplers such as Kellogg's, General Foods and Wrigley's Gum and sell them on putting a sample of their product and a coupon if they wish at a charge to us of 15 cents per sample and 3 cents per coupon. We hire an outside firm such as Burke Research to do a pre/post research study to determine upon receiving the sample how many students went to the store and purchased it. In mostly all our sampled products which became multi-multi millions over time it proved to be a payout for the manufacturer.

This was an advertisement that was distributed within the R Treat box. It was stuck to the inside of the box when I had the box shipped to me. Product companies like Cheer would pay MarketSource to distribute the coupon to a targeted audience, in this case to parents at Toys R Us.

So, chalk up a win for the Kellogg's of the world. It also proved to be a win for the retailer (in this case the college store) as it brought in incremental traffic to get a free sample box. It was a win for the student who got $10 worth of products and coupons free. And, we, as a byproduct of the program made roughly 50 cents a box and since we wound up distributing 2 million boxes, we had 2 million in revenue and 1 million in profit. In addition, we were able to get more and more college stores to carry the product adding a new distribution channel for the manufacturing samplers.

Marty was really happy with the successes so far and he called Jack and I into his office and gave us both equity. He also gave us a nice raise. The incentive to grow the business was greater than ever.

Enter Eric Weil. The cash flow enabled us to hire two new salespeople for Jack and two new college store account managers for Chuck. I hired a real gem in Eric Weil, a former product manager who worked 24/7. Eric was given the challenge of developing an idea Jack came up with. It became known as The Campus Source, and it was a 4 foot by 5-foot electronic unit that hung on the wall of the student union. It had three components — a backlit visual of upcoming events personalized for each school; an LED that could be programmed by a designated school administrator to update students on an important event or date and a 2ft by 3ft backlit advertisement of a Dell personal computer, for example. The units were free to the colleges, and we wound up installing 1,200. Advertisers paid $500 a month to put their ads on the board. We were always sold out, and it was bringing us $6 million a year in revenue. Eric was a dynamo — selling schools and advertisers.

We also teamed up with Sports Illustrated and had campus events involving 3-point basketball shooting, golf putting, and baseball pitching. We teamed up with CBS and had a Young and Restless tour around campus. At this point we moved into a 50,000 square foot building at 10 Abeel Road, Cranbury, NJ.

At this point in 1987 we were by far the leading college marketing company. A few years earlier we had changed our name to MarketSource Corporation. We defined ourselves as a college marketing company. We were doing over 30 million in revenue and had won a number of awards for innovation. Marty Levine was named Ernst and Young's Entrepreneur of the Year, and receive awards from the College Bookstore Association for helping make the stores into diversified retailers and helping their business grow exponentially.

It was time to take Step III: Existing products into new markets.

This is one of the Blockbuster Bonus boxes. This was a massive deal for consumers at the time. You can read more about the story from Dinosaur Dracula

Our first was to take our sample box into Toys R Us and we distributed 5 million boxes twice a year in all 1,500 Toys R Us stores. It brought in traffic during off periods — March and August and we wound up doing this program for 15 years. (Learn more about the R Treat from Dinosaur Dracula).

Next, we distributed 7 million boxes through Blockbuster video stores for 12 years. 3,000,000 boxes through Medicine Shoppe Pharmacies.

Campus Source boards were placed in thousands of high schools and hundreds of military bases. Events were performed in large malls throughout the country.

We were ready for Step IV – New Products in New Markets.

Our first venture was The Golf Link – a wall board placed in private and public golf clubs throughout the country. It featured illustrated golf tips from our partner in the venture – Lee Trevino. And, it included advertising from car, liquor and technology companies.

Lee Trevino was terrific. He gave a golf seminar a couple of times a year and won our clients over with his skill and humor. We had a big meeting planned in San Francisco at the site of the US Open where we were going to pitch a 3 year sponsorship to Toyota. Trevino was the national spokesperson for Toyota and had invited top executives to dinner at Ernie's Restaurant. I was excited to sell the program to Toyota but unfortunately Lee Trevino bailed out. For the first time in his pro career he failed to make the cut and he was so dejected he went home to San Diego and the dinner was cancelled.

Toyota never signed on and Lee resigned from the program. It was our first failure. We wound up selling The Golf Link to a magazine called Golf Illustrated and basically broke even.

However, the next venture with a new product into a new market proved to be a big winner.

Apple was a big client of ours as an advertiser on The Campus Source. Since college stores were becoming an important retailer for them, they asked MarketSource to hire salespeople under the MarketSource name and work the college store. We would pay salary and benefits, and Apple would pay us a 20% markup, so it was a very nice venture to get into. Marty hired a former VP at IBM named Don Clifford and he wound up building an outsource sales force that serviced IBM, Hewlett Packard, AT&T and many other companies. In ten years, Clifford built the business into a $100 million dollars in revenue.

So, by 2001, exactly 20 years after I joined the company it was a $200M revenue company and one of the largest in the country. We strongly considered going public but Marty took ill and we wound up selling the business to two buyers – Alloy Entertainment purchased the marketing services sector of MarketSource and Allegis Corporation purchased the outsource sales division of the company. Allegis is owned by Steve Bisciotti who owns the Baltimore Ravens NFL football team. Alloy was a public company known mostly for popular youth oriented television shows such as Gossip Girl, Pretty Little Liars and Vampire Diaries. I joined Alloy's Board of Directors in 2004 and served on it for 10 years. In 2014 Alloy was sold to Warner Brothers where it still exists.

Over the past 20 years since Allegis took over MarketSource Outsource it has grown to become a worldwide success bringing in over 1.5 billion in annual revenue and is an integral part of Allegis 15-billion-dollar business.

Marty Levine passed away in October of 2003. He will go down as one of the finest entrepreneurs ever. I was lucky to have found that ad in the Jersey newspaper and worked alongside him for over 20 years. Jack McNeil also passed away about 7 years ago. He was a great salesman and very creative.

It has been fun reliving my past through my son Steve's web site. More stories to come.

Fortune 100 Career Journey Narrative Insights

I grew up listening to stories of my dad's career. This is part one of his journey.

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My business career was one of extremes. The first half of my career was working for Fortune 100 companies - Colgate Palmolive; Johnson & Johnson; Warner-Lambert and American Express. The second half started with a 3-man company.

I graduated Wagner College with a degree in Business Administration specializing in accounting. I received an MBA from Pace University in Financial Management.

Fortune 100 Career Journey

I started out as a cost accountant with Colgate at their Jersey City, N.J. plant. I worked in a bullpen area with the sound of old-fashioned calculators throughout the day. Most of the accountants graduated from nearby St. Peters College. Two years after I joined one of my Colgate associates got a job with Johnson & Johnson in New Brunswick, N.J. A few months after he joined J&J, he called me up and said they had a job opening and to give it a shot. I did and I got the job making a few thousand a year more than at Colgate. I worked five years at J&J and my last boss got a job with Warner-Lambert in Morris Plains, N.J. He called and said a job working for him as a senior accountant was mine if I wanted it.

My Fortune 100 Career Journey continued and I took the job in the Consumer Products Division doing P&Ls for each brand in the division... brands such as Listerine, Efferdent, Trident, Dentyne, Rolaids and Halls Cough Drops. I worked very closely with the Product Managers on each brand. The largest brand was Listerine, a market leader product that dominated the mouthwash category. The Group Manager on Listerine was a man named Steve Rothchild. He had a degree from Columbia and an MBA from Harvard. All the product managers had MBAs from the best universities.

One day Steve approached me and says marketing a product is so much more than making commercials and going to sales conferences in Florida or Nassau. There is day to day involvement with market research, trade promotion, consumer promotion, shipping, costs, etc. I need someone who can work the numbers for me... "How would you like to become a Product Manager on Listerine?" I said sure Steve, but I don't have the MBA credentials. He said the ones who have these MBAs don't want to get involved with the numbers. They want to go to New York City and work with J. Walter Thompson, our ad agency, developing TV and print commercials. Then they want to go to the Palm with their agency counterpart for a steak dinner. I need someone who can get me the numbers I need accurately and on time. Steve was a real up and comer at W-L and was able to sell his Division President to give me the job.

Current view of the competition between Listerine and Scope, sitting on a CVS shelf.

I couldn't have joined the Listerine marketing team at a more critical time. Procter and Gamble had recently launched Scope mouthwash, and their advertising campaign was built around the fact it had the same germ kill efficacy but with a fresh minty taste. Listerine's typical user was older and skewed male by 2-1. Scope's was younger and skewed women by 2-1. Scope was beginning to erode Listerine's dominant share. A big meeting between the Listerine marketing team and J. Walter Thompson account executives took place. They came up with an ad campaign for Listerine that ranks as one of the greatest of all time.

The campaign for Listerine took on Scope head on. It recognized Listerine tasted like medicine, but it worked. It also addressed the fact that Listerine users mostly gargled once a day in the morning, so the campaign drove home a simple message:

Listerine Antiseptic—"The Taste People Hate Twice A Day." The commercial went after usage over users. It helped stabilize the brand and give Listerine the time to develop a sister brand... Listermint.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oSZ0pncaEU

You have to love YouTube as I was able to find this commercial from 1973

My job was to develop consumer in store Listerine displays, sweepstakes, coupons and trade incentives to keep from going out of stock.

An interesting sidebar to this is that I worked with a lower-level creative person who was just starting at J. Walter Thompson. His name was James Patterson who has become one of the bestselling authors of all time. Patterson rose up the ranks at JWT and became Creative Director. He left the agency when his first novel featuring Alex Cross became a best seller.

At Warner-Lambert I was offered the position of Director of International Marketing. I went to every Latin American and Asian company in the 5 years I had the job. My main claim to success was as a strategic planning facilitator. I would ask the questions regarding all the internal and external factors affecting their country business. Then we would develop 5-year growth plans and action plans to meet timetables.

Page 1 of my dad's story.

Internal factors are personnel, products, assets, liabilities, R&D. External factors are competition, government regulations, technology, legal, environmental. Internal factors can be controlled for the most part. External factors cannot be controlled (an example is COVID).

My work in International Marketing attracted some suitors... the most interesting and lucrative was American Express where I worked for three

years as Vice President of International Marketing. Then the man who brought me into the company and was my boss left and my new boss and I didn't connect. So, for the first time in my 18-year business career I was out of work. Compounding the situation was that the job market was one of the worst ever.

At that point I did a strategic plan about myself. I analyzed my strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats. I came to the conclusion maybe it was time to join a smaller company. In Part II of my career, I'll go into the second half of my story.

The second half of this story is now published and can be viewed at Experience MarketSource Growth Strategy Executive Review.

Mastering the Game of 8 Ball and a Brothers Legacy

My Uncle Ray, my dad's brother, was a really nice guy.

When I was collecting pictures for this story, I reached out to my cousins, Liz and Maryann to find a few to add to this post. During that exchange, Maryann shared that she used to set up her Barbie house and cottage on my uncle's billiards (pool) table, where he would have been playing the game of 8 ball. Maryann mentioned the table's green felt was the grass for her house. As you will read below, as important as billiards was to my uncle, family was more important.

If you missed Tony's other recent posts, you can find them here at Papa's Corner.

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Brother Ray

My Uncle Ray, playing billiards at a local pool hall.

There is an old saying that rings true now and forever. "You can pick your friends, but you can't pick your relatives".

I was lucky to have a brother who had my back his entire life. Ray passed away a couple of years ago, but he remains alive in the hearts and minds of myself and his two daughters Liz and Maryann. Ray's last couple of years were tough and the devotion and dedication of Liz and Maryann gave him the strength to hold on as long as he could.

The Rooted & Refined Living Expert Tip: 

"Playing games and sports is a great way to bring family and friends together."

I would like to pay homage to my brother in this the fourth installment of my writings.

I am 4 1/2 years older than Ray. This is not an approximation but as real as it gets. My birthday is April 1 and Ray's birthday was September 30... 6 months to the day.

Ray (left) and my dad, Tony as kids.

When Ray was 14, he took an interest in pool. He watched it on television and marveled at the skill of the players. At 16 years old he started going to the pool hall at the corner of Richmond Avenue and Richmond Terrace. My parents weren't thrilled with the idea since the characters that hung around there had questionable backgrounds.

Mom and Dad came up with an idea. Why not give Ray a pool table as a Christmas present. A nice idea but it wasn't cheap since a regulation pool table cost about $800... a lot of money back then.

It seemed important enough to make such a sacrifice, and they wound up buying an old fashion pool table with tunnels, not a net. The sound of pool balls rolling through the tunnels could be heard from the basement where it was placed throughout the house.

Also, the idea of separating Ray from his questionable friends wasn't working since they found a new pool hall at 252 Van Pelt Avenue... the home of Lou and Flo Fiore.

Game of 8 Ball

Handwritten story from the first of 6 pages that my dad sent to me.

Ray loved the pool table, and he would play from early morning to late night. He became good enough to enter tournaments and win his share. Ray became well known in Staten Island pool circles and he got to a point where he could run 10, 15, 20, 25 balls in a row. Few players wanted to play against Ray so he started to go to bars in Manhattan and Brooklyn and he became a skilled 8 ball player for $5 to $10 a game.

The game of 8 ball involves hitting the white cue ball into a rack of 15 balls. Of the 15 balls set up in a rack eight are solids (1 to 7) and the others are stripes (9 to 15). Players must pocket all balls in their designated group (solids or stripes) before pocketing the 8 ball in a designated pocket to win. When Ray aimed the cue ball at the rack he almost always got either a stripe or solid ball in the pocket. Then he methodically ran the other balls and then made the 8 ball. Ray became so good at 8 ball that few wanted to challenge him.

Until he met "Sailor Bill".

Sailor Bill

My Uncle Ray playing billiards.

Sailor Bill was sitting at a Brooklyn bar one day watching Ray polish off one player after another. Bill was a retired Navy man who was about 70 when 18-year-old Ray Fiore met him. He approached Ray at the Brooklyn bar and said "I would like to challenge you." Ray said "I don't want to take your money old man." Sailor Bill said "I'll take that chance. How much do you want to play for?" Ray said "One game for $5 dollars." Sailor Bill said, "Come on if its only one game lets play for $20." Ray said "If you insist." Ray said... "You can break".

The old sailor studied the board picked out a pool stick and then proceeded to clear the table in a couple of minutes. Ray didn't know what hit him. After two rematches Ray was out $60 without taking a shot.

They sat at the bar and Bill bought Ray a drink. He said "Ray you have a lot of potential. I can teach you a lot if you are interested." Ray said sure and for the next couple of months Sailor Bill was a frequent visitor to the Fiore house. Where Ray was able to run 25 balls in a row, Sailor Bill could run 100. He was right out of the movie with Jackie Gleason playing Minnesota Fats.

https://video.wixstatic.com/video/d3f414_9fa1be61f31848638002dc7250b42a95/480p/mp4/file.mp4

Ray just playing around.

Sailor Bill told Ray he saw the pool table in geometric terms, triangles, rectangles and squares and he knew where the cue ball was going to land 5 shots from now.

After Sailor Bills lessons, Ray became better than ever. Throughout his life he never stopped playing pool and won many more games than he lost.

The Final Hustle

At Ray's funeral I gave a eulogy which was about one of Ray's last pool games.

Tony (left) and Ray as adults, January 2014

It was great that at the end of our work careers we wound up at the same

company... MarketSource Corporation in Cranbury, New Jersey. We had a Christmas luncheon and after it was over Ray asked a few of us to join him at this new restaurant in Cranbury that had a pool table. So about 6 of us joined Ray at this place and we sat at a table having drinks and watching this hot shot named Mikey polish off one player after another in 8 ball. So Ray approaches Mikey and says wanna play. Mikey says, "I don't want to take your money old man". Ray says no problem... How much you want to play for?" "How about $20... You can break". I'm thinking bad move Mikey.

Five games later, Mikey is out $100 and he has taken only a few shots. He can't believe what happened to him. Then I look over and in the corner of the bar Mikey and Ray are talking intently.

Then I see Ray hand over the $100 he just won back to Mikey... who leaves the place.

As Ray returns to our table, we ask him why he gave Mikey his money back. Ray says Mikey told him he has a couple of young kids and the money was for Christmas toys.

Then a bar patron who heard Ray's story chimes in... "You got to be kidding... Is that what he told you". Ray said yes and he even gave him $20 of his own money.

The bar patron says... well Mikey is not married and has no kids. In fact, he is a big playboy.

Ray's smile turns into a laugh. "Well, I guess the hustler got hustled".

That was Ray... as kind a person out there. A great brother, husband, father and grandfather.

I am so lucky to have him as a brother.