Keating Magee’s headquarters occupies a full floor in the Jackson Brewery building. One side of the suite overlooks the Mississippi River. Occasionally the marketing agency’s conferences are accompanied by a steamboat’s calliope belting out a Dixieland tune. The opposite side faces the rest of French Quarter, with a fine view of Jackson Square and St. Louis Cathedral.
As befits its location, the agency serves a blue-chip roster of both local and national clients, including utility/cable firm Cox Media; Tulane University Hospital and Clinic; and classic Creole cuisine restaurant Galatoire’s.
A Keating Magee campaign for Galatoire’s notes “Our waiters have as much local flavor as the menu.” Photographs by Richard H. Levey
On Aug. 28, the agency employed 35 people. After Hurricane Katrina made landfall, its staff under went a series of draconian cuts that left it with 13 workers – the heads of the public relations, media, creative, finance, new business and account services departments, and one or two additional employees in each function.
Holly McCollum was one of those remaining. As vice president of media services — as well as an active participant in the local chapter of the American Association of Advertising Agencies — McCollum has kept her finger on the pulse of the advertising and promotion industry throughout Katrina’s aftermath.
According to McCollum, one of the significant changes to the New Orleans advertising community is that media measurement firms have largely pulled out of the city. Even before Katrina, New Orleans was not a top 40 market, and between the population loss and the devastation to its infrastructure, firms such as ACNeilsen won’t be measuring audiences much before the end of 2006, if then, according to McCollum.
“The old metrics of measurement are no longer statistically valid,” she said. “The crutch for retailers and agencies of Gross Ratings Points and Cost Per Point is gone. Every business that spends money has effectively become a direct marketer. We are back to the days of having to prove a campaign’s effectiveness — did we sell product, i.e. did it work? — versus efficiencies.”
What this means is that New Orleans could become “a beta market for direct marketing,” as McCollum puts it.
“Everything is pure direct response,” she said. “There is no way to get cost per point or an accurate cost per thousand. Everything is based on response. You run the ad and it gets a response or it doesn’t – and you know immediately.”
Keating Magee’s clients are buying much more online and e-mail direct marketing than they had before Katrina. “There has been a huge shift in client acceptance to online DM,” said McCollum.
One client, Cox Media, has given its online media planning and creative design to Keating Magee. “There has been a tenfold increase in its online budget,” McCollum said. “They can’t do mail.”
In fact, few New Orleans marketers can, which makes the city’s role as a multichannel marketplace questionable. Six months after Katrina, the U.S. Postal Service’s ability to provide reliable service within the city is minimal. Standard mail and periodicals are not being delivered into the city, and First Class mail arrives anywhere from two to three days to several months after it is mailed. In late February, McCollum received a check from a consignment firm that had sold her piano. The check had been mailed on Nov. 28.
Not only is Cox not doing mail right now, it isn’t doing television, either. Before Katrina, it had purchase a series of 60-second direct response TV ads. It has discontinued doing so.
“That was a back-end issue on their end,” McCollum said. “They didn’t have enough seasoned staffers to man the phone lines.”
Another client, Tulane University Hospital and Clinic, has spent significantly more on direct response radio and print than it ever had before. “Originally, it was to do outreach to staff and patients spread across the U.S.,” said McCollum. “For the first 5 months after the storm, traffic on the roads was significantly higher as more folks commuted into and out of the city to jobs and ruined homes – and therefore radio became a better vehicle for reaching consumers. We are finally going back onto local TV, now that the downtown campus has finally reopened.”
This presents an interesting dilemma. On the one hand, people who have had their homes either partly or completely destroyed are a market for, quite frankly, everything. On the other, catalogs simply aren’t being delivered within affected areas in New Orleans. McCollum offered several suggestions for marketers wishing to reach these consumers.
“Mine your database for e-mail addresses, and use e-mail direct marketing to push visitors to your Web site,” she said. “Provide e-mail only offers to track results. Run 15-second radio spots, pushing the Web site if needed. Take the dollars you would have used in direct mail and buy electronic media with a direct response strategy of tightly controlling the message delivery and tracking the response.”
Finally, marketers should apply Media Efficiency Ratios (MERs) to all forms of media, not just direct response. Every advertising purchase should be made with an eye toward tracking exactly how many dollars in sales each dollar spent on marketing generates. “I then evaluate each vendor’s MER and cut back or eliminate the vendors who do not bring in my benchmark ratio. I can also track the MER over time, and when the efficiency drops, I renegotiate with the vendor. When the results suffer, the rate goes down.”
As New Orleans’ recovery continues, Keating Magee has re-hired or added staff, and currently has 28 employees. As the company has brought people onboard after the hurricane, however, it has placed a premium on cross-training its workers.
The New Orleans recovery forged a stronger bond among its employees, McCollum said. “This is seen across all businesses. Where there were once air kisses and polite handshakes, now folks greet each other as long-lost best friends, with hugs and true emotions.”
Holly McCollum, vice president of media at marketing agency Keating Magee
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