Today we meet John Ahern, vice president-new business development at Boutique List Services in Stony Point, NY. A 16-year industry veteran, he’s seeing a gradual loosening up of marketing budgets even though there are fewer good response names available now thanks in part to the decline of large continuity clubs.
Ahern has been in his post for exactly one year. He has previously worked for BMG Music as well as for such list companies as American List Counsel and MKTG Services.
Right now, Ahern’s principal brokerage areas include large database companies like Acxiom as well as a lot of insert media.
As he sees it, the current recession is quite similar to the period that followed the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001 and the ensuing anthrax attacks in the mail.
“Years ago, before 9/11 and before anthrax, it was utopia,” he says, noting “the economy took a dive last year and everybody was very close to the vest.”
He says he sees things loosening up a bit now, even though it may take a year or so for the recession to clear.
“What’s happening now is people are starting to realize that direct marketing is a big part of their sales and where they weren’t really letting loose with the dollars a year ago they’re starting to loosen up again,” he says.
At the same time, Ahern points to a number of institutional changes that the brokerage industry must deal with more and more.
“The main differences from when I started are that a lot of people are doing a lot online so a lot of universes that people used to rent on the list brokerage side have dwindled,” he says.
As an example, he points to the decline of continuity clubs such as the Book of the Month Club, BMG Music and Columbia House, which had millions and millions of names available.
“What happened was the IPod was invented,” he quips.
To help compensate for this lack of response –based data, mailers have been turning more toward modeling and analytics “because they need to make sure that the names they are renting are going to perform for them," he says.
“You don’t see too any people going out with a buckshot approach anymore,” he continues. “People used to do things like rent a million names from BMG and, like in the old saying, ‘if you throw enough spaghetti against the wall, some of it’s going to stick.’”
“And it’s just not that way anymore: people have smaller universes to contend with,” he notes.
Ahern also says he’s seen a rise in the number of firms using insert media largely because of the cost savings.
But here too, there are problems.
“I have a client right now who’s looking to test two million inserts and wants them all out in one shot and it’s been a helluva time trying to find a program for them,” he says, noting again that there are no more large continuity club files available.
Overall, Ahern thinks things are going to bounce back largely the way they did after 9/11, “not to the level that they were at but I really believe that people are going to start doing the same type of marketing that they were doing,” he says.
Off the job, Ahern, who lives with his wife and two sons in Dayton, NJ, enjoys playing racquetball and playing trivia games.
