Q&A: infoUSA Chairman/CEO Vin Gupta

Advertising during the Super Bowl is a must for marketers of motor vehicles, soft drinks, and motion pictures. But for mailing list providers, not so much. Nonetheless, Omaha-based Sales Genie took the estimated $2.6 million risk on a 30-second Super Bowl spot and an undisclosed sponsorship deal to be a presenting sponsor of a half-hour segment of the pregame show. According to Ann Arbor, MI-based ROI evaluation services company Joyce Julius and Associates, the pregame exposure alone was valued at $1,216,665.

CHIEF MARKETER’s Tim Parry spoke with Vin Gupta, chairman/CEO of Sales Genie’s parent company, infoUSA, about whether the risk was worth the reward.

CHIEF MARKETER: Traditionally advertisers with a product or a service for consumers are the ones that choose to advertise during the Super Bowl. What gave you the idea to get your Sales Genie brand out there?

Vin Gupta: There are 300 million people in the U.S., and people who are over 12 that have an affinity to buy things make up over 210 million. In our case, we see a potential market to be about 30 million prospects and customers. So we are not strictly consumer, we are not strictly business, we fall somewhere in the middle. When you’re trying to reach 30 million potential buyers, the Super Bowl makes good sense.

CM: Did the success of domain-name seller and Website host GoDaddy.com, which has advertised during the Super Bowl for the past few years, influence your decision?

Gupta: Absolutely. I think in the past we all saw Super Bowl advertising as something for consumers, like beer and cars. But then when you see FedEx-Kinko’s, or you see GoDaddy.com, they are not exactly selling to every person. But they have a big enough market. So that definitely got me thinking that we should look into that.

CM: The commercial was conceived and produced inhouse. When was the concept first imagined, and how much time was needed to make it a reality?

Gupta: We had talked to some of the ad agencies, and most of them were either go their way or the highway. They were all revved up to produce a funny commercial which will bring a large whatever, and be the number-one or number-two commercial in the Super Bowl. I didn’t want any of that. I wanted a commercial that would help sell our service. That’s why I pretty much wrote the commercial. We just talked about a salesman who is very successful, doesn’t work very hard, and makes a lot of money, and he is smart because he uses Sales Genie. I’ve always believed there are a lot of people that work hard but they don’t get anywhere, and there are a lot of people that work smart but not very hard and make a lot of money. The whole concept here was just to show the benefit of Sales Genie in a very simple way. [To view the commercial, click here.]

CM: The commercial wasn’t flashy, there wasn’t an attempt at outlandish humor, it just pretty much told viewers why they need Salesgenie.com. Why did you take the simple route?

Gupta: There was some humor. There is a beautiful girl, and she sees this salesman come in driving a Ferrari, and she says, “Hey, can you give me a ride?” And he says, “I’m not too sure yet.” Then there’s the guy who is working very hard and he hasn’t sold anything. And he asks the successful one, “Hey, how do you do it?” There’s subtle humor, but it’s not what I would call a Budweiser commercial.

CM: With that in mind, you’re offering the public a chance to create ideas for the next Super Bowl commercial. Will simple win over flashy?

Gupta: So far, there are a lot of good ideas.

CM: What did the pregame-broadcast sponsorship involve? Was it on-air mentions? An embedded logo onscreen?

Gupta: That was an extra. CBS came to us, and they were very helpful. They said it would be good to have a sponsorship like Sales Genie for a half an hour. Since we’re not a known brand, they thought that it would be a good warm-up for people to see Sales Genie on the screen. That was their idea.

CM: Just two days after the Super Bowl, you reported more than 10,000 registrations from potential new customers. What kind of new leads did you have by the end of February?

Gupta: It has brought us registrations, it has brought us trials, it has brought us subscribers. Also it has helped give us visibility, which we didn’t have before. Advertising on the Super Bowl kind of gives you that “Good Housekeeping” seal of approval. We did a survey through Opinion Research. Before the commercial, when we called 100 businesses, only about 10% knew about Sales Genie. After the Super Bowl, it had jumped to 24%.

CM: Are the interested parties also getting an education about other products and services in the infoUSA family? [InfoUSA’s other companies include list services firms Walter Karl, Millard Group, and Mokrynskidirect; digital ad services provider DoubleClick; and e-mail marketing firm Yesmail.]

Gupta: Once we tell them about Sales Genie, and they get comfortable, and they like it, then we can tell them about other services we have.

CM: How about next year? Are you planning on expanding the campaign to include maybe more than one commercial during Super Bowl XLII?

Gupta: We are thinking about advertising in what I call the major events, whenever we feel that sale people would be watching those events. We would like to expand that. I don’t see us, for example, having a Sales Genie car [in NASCAR]. The problem with a car, I think, is that it’s not watched so much, and not for the money. We need to do a commercial that would air during a NASCAR race.