Profiles: BEN Marketing
Twelve years isn’t exactly an epoch, but it is long enough to put BEN Marketing among the promotion industry’s old guard.
CEO Chuck Nardizzi and p.r. guru Joe Block formed the shop in 1989 to fill what they saw as an industry void. “I didn’t like what I saw in the promotions industry, and I had hired over 50 agencies in my 11 years at Pepsi,” says Nardizzi. “Back then, agencies were tactical, not strategic. I don’t think there was a single ceo who was marketing-trained — never mind a creative guy.”
Since those “old” days, Stamford, CT-based BEN has grown into a $16 million shop with more than 120 employees and a client roster of blue-chip companies topped by Coca-Cola. The agency’s satellite office in Atlanta, opened after BEN won the Coke account in 1996, is the second-largest promo shop in the area. (The p.r. side of the business never really took off, and Block left shortly after he and Nardizzi sold to Bethesda, MD-based ad agency Panoramic Communications in 1998.)
Nardizzi believes things are a lot different today. “This business is finally starting to realize that promotion agencies need to be marketing agencies first,” Nardizzi says. “There are some good people in the industry today — but not enough.”
“It’s frustrating when clients just say, ‘Bring us the FSI!” says president Bruce Perlman, a former Ralston-Purina executive. “It drives us nuts when we’re meeting with some 26-year-old brand person and we present a bevy of ideas and his one comment is, ‘Tell me about the prize pool.’”
That attitude can catch some clients off-guard. “I’m impressed with the range of services we get from them,” says Steve Hutcherson, vp-brand business unit manager for Coca-Cola Classic. “They provided resources we weren’t really expecting, such as strategic planning and brand messaging.”
But that’s why Coke is willing to entrust product launches to the shop, like it did last March with the Dasani water rollout. BEN’s “Simplify Wellness” program included sponsorships of special health series on Discovery Channel and The Today Show on NBC and sampling during the start of Rod Stewart’s tour. The effort drew bottler participation of 88 percent — the highest for any product launch in Coke’s history. BEN was rewarded with work on the current rollout of Vanilla Coke, the company’s biggest launch since Diet Coke.
Products don’t always have to be so fresh, however. “They’re always able to take our annual summer and winter promotions and tweak them so we get more call volume,” says John Merkin, director of hotel innovations and channel marketing at Holiday Inn, Atlanta, a client since 1996.
BEN refines Holiday Inn’s 50-year-old Kids Eat/Stay Free offer by constantly upgrading the perks. Last summer’s effort matched the hotelier with the Discovery Channel for an effort dubbed Explore Your World featuring kids’ premiums at check-in. Franchisee participation exceeded 90 percent, call volume jumped 30 percent, and bookings rose 17 percent.
BEN feels like it’s poised for another wave of growth. But the agency is being careful to avoid biting off more than it can chew.
“Jay Chiat said, ‘How big do we have to get before we’re bad?’” says Nardizzi. “We’ll have to think about whether we want to get any bigger. We can probably double our business one more time, but after that I don’t know. Right now there’s not one piece of work we don’t spend a lot of time with, and we want to keep it that way.”
Spoken like a true veteran.
