FIRST IT WAS rubber chickens that went faster than speeding pullets. Then it was floating 8-balls we were asked to get behind. Now it’s Hula-Hoops.
No, the genius with the novelty- store obsessions is not Alvin the Chipmunk. It’s Grant Johnson, who has left DMC Inc. in Pewaukee, WI to start his own direct response agency, Johnson Direct, in Brookfield, WI.
The press kit for the launch includes a Hula-Hoop and literature with the headline, “What’s All the HOOPLA About?” The point of the Hula-Hoop is that the company will “jump through hoops” for its clients, Johnson explains.
Talk about spin. Even his business card features a picture of a man with a briefcase in one hand and a light bulb in the other, while spinning a Hula-Hoop around his waist.
It’s doubtful there’s a bad joke to which Johnson won’t stoop to pitch a product or service, or even himself. Of course, he did start out life as a jazz critic and disc jockey. But Johnson does have serious plans for his agency.
He left DMC, which he describes as a good shop, because after 10 years “it was time to try something new.” After three weeks of something new, he landed two manufacturing clients and a utilities firm.
Johnson sees utilities as a growth opportunity. Along with telecommunications, utilities have expanded under deregulation and brought in a round of mergers and acquisitions. He is also looking for clients among insurance and pharmaceutical companies, as well as such nonprofit educational institutions as zoos and aquariums.
Like many folks in the industry, Johnson got involved with direct marketing by accident.
After graduating from college with a major in communications, he went looking for a job in sales or advertising and “lucked into a lettershop,” as he puts it. He was amazed by the targetability and accountability of direct response, but perhaps not as amazed as he was when he went back to his college textbooks and found not more than a paragraph or two about DM.
Johnson’s “DM gods” turn out to be Dick Burton and David Ogilvy, “who understood the power of direct marketing.”
Another is DIRECT “Curmudgeon-at-Large” columnist Herschell Gordon Lewis.
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