Martin Berns Blog Number 1 8/10/07
Hey, I never blogged before so this should be interesting. I will undoubtedly start out at novice 101 and after many months graduate all the way up to Beta 1.0.
I am not sure how this blog will evolve but my first thought is to just recite a little history as to how I arrived at this place known as MediaNet Group Technologies and BSP Rewards. (With the emphasis on our operating division BSP Rewards).
My family was in the soft drink business (my father was a founder of Dad’s Root Beer) so I naturally became driven to be an entrepreneur myself. Forgoing an explanation of my initial forays into business (and the lessons learned the hard way) my education lead me into the world of marketing consultancy.
Moving along to the early ‘60s I became intrigued with the rewards and loyalty industry. That was at the height of the era whereby licking and pasting stamps in books was all the rage. I was a young marketing consultant at the time looking for niches that might offer opportunity to spread my “I want o be in business” wings.
I was driving in Chicago one day when I came to an intersection that featured service stations on all 4 corners. 3 of those stations gave stamps as a reward and incentive but the one with the Dinosaur logo (Sinclair) stood alone as the sole non-participant. A friend of mine knew a top executive at the company and I asked him to try and ascertain their reasoning for not joining the trend. He came back with a very simple two word answer, “too expensive”. It seemed that they did not want to be involved in a program that was a straight cost with the only verifiable benefit going to the stamp issuer who both sold the stamps and was the redemption center that made the sale and profit. By the way, this is the same ‘upfront cost” redemption and breakage model used today by many rewards and incentive programs (think air miles and catalog/gift card providers).
I then had an epiphany (Of course in those days I had never heard of the word). I then asked my friend make an appointment for me with his oil company executive friend as I wanted to propose something to them that I thought might fit their model. He called and said he had set up the meeting and when I arrived I was shocked to find I was to present to their entire Board of Directors.
I explained the plan. They would give stamps but they would also become the redemption center where the books could be exchanged for their gas and products. They would turn the redeemed books back to us and we would pay them cash for the value of each book. In other words, they became the redemption center, made the sale (at their normal margins), benefited from the redemption traffic and of course up sold additional gas and services to the redeemers. I explained an additional feature of offering the program to local merchants surrounding their stations, again making the stations, along with the local merchants, official redemption centers.
It was the quickest sale I ever made. They immediately understood the benefits and the cost reduction – and possible new revenue and profit generating- and value of becoming a give and redeem merchant/redemption center for the program.
How that evolved into the modern BSP Rewards Mall platform is another story for another day.
