Could a New Name Fix a Company?

Chris Russo launched a successful fantasy sports business. Would rebranding help the business to grow?

By Jason Del Rey |  @DelRey   | Nov 1, 2010

Doron Gild

Reality Check Chris Russo (center) launched a fantasy sports business. It grew into something altogether larger.

Almost from the start, though, FSV's name was a bit of a contradiction; its first acquisition was Hoopsworld, a basketball news site that Russo felt would appeal to fantasy basketball players. The company continued to branch out from fantasy sites -- signing on, for example, blogs targeted to sports at specific colleges and universities. By 2009, FSV was selling advertising space and securing promotions for hundreds of sites, forming a network that attracted as many as 16 million visitors a month. But the Fantasy Sports Ventures name sometimes confused advertisers. "We reached a point where marketers and advertisers were asking for things beyond fantasy," says Evan Kamer, FSV's chief operating officer, "but because of the fantasy moniker, it increasingly became a hurdle for our sales team."Chris Russo had a healthy business. The only thing holding it back, he thought, was its name. Three years after its launch in 2006, Fantasy Sports Ventures's revenue was increasing 40 percent to 50 percent a year, a pace that surprised even Russo. But by the fall of 2009, he was uneasy. Despite the heady growth, Russo felt the company's brand positioning was pigeonholing the business and would soon limit further expansion. What started as an online fantasy sports company had morphed into a business that owned and partnered with all sorts of other sports websites, numbering in the hundreds. The growth of the network had helped FSV amass millions of monthly visitors and placed it among the Top 10 sports online networks, right up there withESPN and Yahoo Sports. Its name no longer reflected what the company had become. "Advertisers make judgments on new companies in a snap," Russo says, "and if they don't want to advertise on a fantasy site for whatever reason, it gets tough because of our name."

Still, Russo was reluctant to tinker with a business that, for the most part, worked. Should the company, he pondered, risk upsetting its trajectory on the bet it might do even better with a new strategy and brand?

When Russo launched Fantasy Sports Ventures, he brought with him a sizableRolodex and six years of experience running the new-media division of the National Football League, where he oversaw the release of the league's fantasy football games. With FSV, he wanted to purchase a handful of prominent fantasy sports sites, then partner with a broader network of independent sites by selling ad space for them and splitting the resulting revenue. "There was a real opportunity to aggregate a whole bunch of niche sites that together would have a large audience and then sell sponsorships and ad programs to big brands that wanted to reach passionate fans," he says. His connections helped him raise an initial $6 million from angel investors and, later, additional funds from USA Today.

By last fall, Kamer and others were pushing for a name change, but Russo remained conflicted. The business was growing, and it had taken considerable resources to build the brand it had. Was hitting Reset really the best move? At one point, Russo proposed the idea of refocusing exclusively on the fantasy sports market. FSV's continued success, though, was forcing his hand. "Traffic continued to grow, and I saw that we had a chance to be a top one or two site," Russo says. "The chance of being bigger than ESPN online started to become a goal to shoot for that two years ago wasn't even in the realm of possibility."

In October 2009, Russo invited the managers of five of FSV's most popular sites toNew York City for an all-day meeting with the executive team to discuss the company's future. In a rented conference room in the Marriott Marquis hotel, Russo laid out the company's growth trajectory. He also hit on the difficulties the sales team was having with tapping into lucrative big-brand advertising budgets for general sports sites. He said he believed that FSV, with its collection of college sports blogs, an overall informal voice, and several sites rich in sports stats, had an opportunity to stake a claim as the indie-voice alternative to sites such as ESPN and Fox Sports. That would mean renaming the brand.

The mood in the room was at times tense. "There was some concern," says Whit Walters, general manager of the fantasy football site The Huddle. "When we came into a fresh company in 2007, we were told we were going to be a fantasy company and were told that was the best positioning for FSV." Still, he had faith in Russo and FSV and was willing to hear him out. The others were willing to listen, too, but the idea of a new brand name took time to digest. "You could see the gears turning in lots of people's minds," says Ron Shandler, editor and publisher of Baseball HQ, another fantasy site, "trying to figure out what this meant and project out the ripple effect."

The Decision In December 2009, Russo enlisted the branding firm SME to help him come up with a fresh concept for FSV and explore the possibility of coming up with a new brand name. (The company's name would remain Fantasy Sports Ventures.) To start, FSV's executive team worked with SME's Ed O'Hara to explore repositioning the company. O'Hara ran the team through an exercise to articulate what made FSV different from other sports sites. Russo recalls saying, "What we have is really unparalleled breadth and depth of sports knowledge and insight that helps make fans smarter. And we're also independent, a little bit irreverent, and entrepreneurial."

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Take The Stress Out Of Saving Money

By Andy Didyk

Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

The following is a guest post about something that I think will be on everyone’s mind as we begin a new year: saving money.  Trisha Wagner has outlined some very direct and easy-to-follow tips for making the most out of your budget in 2010.  Now if only I can get her to author a post on saving time so that I can blog more often…that’s next on my list.

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How you manage your personal finances plays a crucial role in your short and long term financial security.  Every person is different and faces unique challenges based on their own financial situation.  There are however three problematic areas that many people agree can lead to financial disaster.  They include; having too much debt, too little savings and not enough money (income) to remedy either situation.  For people struggling with limited resources, eliminating debt and building savings can add a lot of stress to an already difficult situation.  Fortunately saving money does not have to be a stressful endeavor.  Here are a few tips that can take the stress out of saving money.

• Make it automatic-  It is a proven fact that when people have to physically manage their cash, there is a tendency to spend money on unnecessary purchases.  If you have trouble getting your money into your savings account eliminate the temptation of spending that money elsewhere by having it automatically deposited into your savings account.  Determine how much money you can comfortably afford to deposit each pay and have that amount transferred from your paycheck to your savings each pay period.  Most people are surprised how easy it is to forget about that money when they don’t “see” it each pay.
• Saving to save-  Many people claim they simply do not have enough money to sacrifice even a small portion to savings.  In most cases there are areas in your life where you spend money unconsciously.  Track your spending for a minimum of one week, preferably one month to see where you are losing money on unnecessary purchases.  Consider services, memberships and subscriptions that you currently have to determine if that money could be put to better use elsewhere.  Unless you are facing a true financial hardship you can likely come up with a decent amount of cash to contribute to your savings by simply not wasting it in other areas of your life.
• Budget savings-  The benefits of having a budget have been well documented yet many consumers still do not have a household budget in place.  Every dollar should have a job and it is your responsibility to assign where your money will be spent.  By including your savings in your budget you automatically know where that money is going and will be less likely to find other uses for that cash.
• Have realistic goals-  Due to the recession individuals may find themselves having trouble balancing all of their financial obligations.  If it is unrealistic for you to contribute the recommended 10% of your earnings to savings then find a number that works for your situation.  The key is realizing that every little bit adds up and even small contributions made on a regular basis will help build savings that can be used in an emergency or toward other financial goals.

Saving money in the current economic climate may be a difficult task for individuals facing tough times, however it is necessary to ensure financial security.  By building a cushion of “extra” money you actually reduce the stress of living paycheck to paycheck.  In addition to having back up money for emergencies you also put yourself in a position to invest future savings for long term growth.  Use these tips to take the stress out of saving money and save yourself the real stress of living without savings.

Trisha Wagner is a freelance writer for DepositAccounts.com, where you can compare rates of checking accounts from dozens of banks in one place. Trisha writes regularly on the topics of personal finance and savings accounts.

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Does the online social influence of others matter to you? If you’re in business, it should

06/12/2010

tags: andrew gerrard, blogger outreach, fresh networks, influencer program, Online influence, social media influence

by Gemma Went

This a guest post from Andrew Gerrard, an associate of Red Cube and business partner over at Article 8. Andrew is a social business consultant and digital strategist and we’ve been discussing the subject of online social influence for some time. Here’s his take on it and a very handy framework for developing an influencer outreach programme.

As individuals, communities and organisations evolve and embrace social as an integral part of their everyday online habits, the nature of what they say and do, and the effect it has on the people around them is increasingly being viewed as a strategically important part of your business planning and activities. Finding the people and organisations within your market that are socially influential online is a natural step for any business if you want to harness the opportunities it offers. Getting the benefits of somebody else’s views hasn’t suddenly appeared overnight; businesses have been using key influencers in their respective markets for a long time, and we are now used to the wide-spread implementation of this online with things like ratings and reviews guides, recommendations and referrals systems, feedback and comments features, and the rise of socially influential online content, individuals and organisations. So encouraging people whose opinions make some difference to talk about, or do, something that benefits your business is now a basic part of any online social business strategy.

But don’t think this is just a simple case of doing a bit of online PR and marcomms with a few online publications and assume that your customers are going to read about you there; this is about finding people who don’t appear on your PR lists but who nevertheless are capable of having a huge impact on your business. So that means finding them, approaching them, and developing a relationship with them, wherever they happen to be. And a key point that is well worth remembering here is that not only are these people in a position to have a potentially significant positive effect on your activities and plans, but they could be an influential adversary that can be turned into an advocate, or when you potentially have to deal with an issue or crisis they may also be able to help save you. Treat them well and they in turn will treat you well.

So here is a framework for developing an influencer outreach programme, designed to help you discover those people who are going to be influential for your business, and build a lasting mutually beneficial relationship with them.

1.  Build your lists

Start by researching your markets for commentators, bloggers, key figure-heads, public speakers, analysts, well-known individuals and sectors etc. etc. Establish the relevancy of each to what you want to achieve so you know who is most likely to help you. Check their tone of voice if you can and how they are likely to respond to your approach. These are real people after all. Identify their preferred outlets and channels for their content and where they are most likely to be engaged, making sure that if they are stronger in some areas than others, then you know which ones. There are plenty of tools such as Technorati, Google, Delicious, Klout etc. to help you find, evaluate and grade potential influencers. Fresh Networks has published a comprehensive, and very useful, influencers report for 2010 and the tools to find them, which you candownload here. Online publications in your markets, conference websites and popular blog lists are a great place to start looking. Tag different influencers according to what they talk about as they are not all going to be valuable in the same way. Building different lists of influencers for your different markets as you go is a smart thing to do. And if you use tools to help then you will likely get different results, so try to get a broad picture for each influencer; a heavy Twitter user may not be as widely influential on Facebook, even though they may have a bigger audience there.

2.  Look for niche influencers and sectors

Don’t just target popular broad mass-market individuals and ignore smaller, niche or vertical sectors. Influencers with large audiences may have the reach, but if they don’t engage directly with their audiences on issues that matter to you then they may also be irrelevant. They may also be over-burdened with lots of requests and demands from others to talk about a wide variety of things so they could have a lack of focus for you. On the other hand, influencers that don’t have large audiences, but who are passionate, dedicated and actively engaged in their communities may prove to be more cost-effective and valuable in the long-term. And if an influencer doesn’t respond to you then look for others in the space who will.

3.  Research them

Establish who they are, what they talk about, what kind of content they may produce, how they interact and engage with their audiences, and whether they are likely to understand what you want to achieve and how they can contribute to your efforts. Pay attention to how you can help them and what kind of content they could use, such as written docs., technical specs., multi-media multi-cast content, raw materials and assets, or pre-packaged embedded link code, exclusives etc. Also don’t forget to look for other channels that they use. These could be columns they write, guest-posts on other sites, syndicated or aggregated content, especially on other networks including traditional broadcast or print media outlets.

4.  What do they talk about

Use specific onsite searches and general search tools and sites to establish how relevant they are for you. Check on how often and how recently they discussed or promoted things that are important to you. If they haven’t produced anything appropriate for a while this may indicate that their focus has shifted away from your markets. Conversely, if they start to write more about your markets, pay more attention to them (see 10. maintenance).

5.  Personalise your contact and make it relevant. To them

However you plan to initially approach someone, do try to use their preferred name if you can. It sounds obvious but most of the time you will know who they are, and using a general form of hello will probably annoy them and put them off from listening to you before you’ve even told them about yourself. Where somebody prefers to use a shortened form of their name or a nickname, show them you’re listening by using it. But – personal plea here – please don’t assume that a name like Andrew can be automatically shortened to Andy  When you do contact them mention some aspect of their work, output or efforts, perhaps commenting on a recent blog post of theirs or feeding back on some activity, and leading in to what you then want to talk about. It will give them a point of reference and an introduction to what you then have to offer them.

6.  Be open, honest and transparent

As much as you can. It may not always be possible to always be completely transparent if you want to talk to somebody about confidential, proprietary or publicly unannounced products or services. But if you want them to be an advocate then you need to establish a relationship based on trust on which both they, and you, can rely. If you are uncomfortable telling them something or answering a question they may have, then say so with a reason. They’ll probably respect you more for that than if you try to play politics with them. And whatever you do, don’t lie, cheat, prevaricate, over-complicate or dodge them. Just don’t.

7.  Get to the point

And be brief. Influential people by their very nature may be in demand and will probably not appreciate others who waste their time and energy. Keep your contact personal, short, relevant, engaging, and if it’s appropriate don’t forget to state what you want, how they can help you and what they will potentially get out of it. It’s always a good idea to let them know what the benefit is for them.

8.  Support them

Once you have made contact with someone, got a reply, and have started to develop a relationship with them, ensure that you provide the support they need. This means timely and relevant contact, always appropriate content in the right formats, and if they don’t use a particular channel or publish content like video, then don’t send it to them. But if they do, then make sure it fits with what they produce. Make it easy for them by ensuring that all the work involved in things like formatting, finding links, editing etc. has been done, unless, of course, that is what they want to do. And remember, if they are influential for you, then it’s likely they are also influential for, and influenced by, others in your markets, so be aware of this when you speak to them. Introducing them to some valuable contacts who can also help them may be a great way to develop your relationships and the long-term benefits this will bring.

9.  Recognise the value of the relationship

Influencers will respond much more positively if they can see the value in the relationship that they have with you. So demonstrate this early, and continue to show it often. This does not necessarily have to be presented as a stated benefit or professional objective. It can also be shown in the small things you do to help someone achieve their goals, whatever they may be. This applies in both their professional and personal lives, as some advice or help in something personal for them will create a caring impression. And just as you shouldn’t smother them, at the same time you need to ensure that they too don’t start demanding too much from you, potentially diverting your focus away from what’s important. Further, recognise that sometimes specific influencers may not always want to engage with you, and that you may be better off by talking to others and cultivating mutual relationships with them.

10.  Maintain your lists

This is a key part to any influencer outreach programme as influence is a constantly shifting and active thing. Regular review of your influencer relationships will help you establish who you should pay more attention to and who may drop down your list of priorities.  This is also true as your business needs evolve. A change in business focus; or perhaps the introduction of new products, services or marketing campaigns will require a review of your influencer lists and contacts to ensure they are up-to-date, relevant and being maintained in an appropriate manner.

By maintaining healthy, mutually beneficial, relationships with people and organisations who are both actively interested and engaged in what you’ve got to say; and who have the networks of influence to spread your message, you put yourself in a better position to reap the benefits of everything that social business has to offer.

Andrew Gerrard is a social business consultant and a digital strategist. Find him on Twitter and LinkedIn.

Target has a lot it can teach our political candidates

What can the latest stable of political candidates learn from Target? Simple. As in, keep your promise simple and deliver on it in a way that sets your brand apart in the minds of consumers. While it’s easier said than done, Target is prime example of a brand that has mastered the art of getting the simple things right.

For instance, making sure its ads are instantly recognizable by dint of their crisp, clean, upbeat feel and their snappy problem-solution execution. Or the way the discount retailer backs up its “Expect More. Pay Less.” claim with the stylish assortment of affordable merchandise displayed in its crisp, clean, upbeat stores. Or, simple as simple can be the company’s use of the color red; color being one of the easiest but most powerful branding apps a brand can own. I could go on and on about what the latest stable of political candidates can learn, but that’s not my shtick. Branding is. So take a look at my most recent piece in Forbes Online and read more about the simple lessons any brand can learn from Target.

The iPad defines what’s really new in brand-building

What’s new? I mean really new.
This is the million (billion?) dollar question any company thinking of launching a brand should ask. This is not by any means a new notion. Brand success has always rested on the ability to deliver something different and ensure this difference is something people care about. But, these days, with the swift current of “new” products, the real winners are those who redefine their categories.
It’s not being the first to market that counts, but the first to deliver an authentic game changer. For example in my recent column in Forbes.com, I write about the iPad. Not simply a new product, Apple introduced something that never existed before. Hold it in your hands, rest it on your knees in bed, catch up with e-mail, movies, TV shows, the latest games, magazines, newspapers, etcetera, etcetera. Every experience seems closer, more intimate, almost magical. What’s new? The iPad is new, really new. I invite you to take a look at my column and find out what “new”, really new, really means.

Change Generation: Aaron Levie, CEO of Box.net

BY AUSTIN CARRToday

Aaron Levie knew before most forecasters: It's cloudy in Silicon Valley. As the co-founder of Box.net, a platform he built in college to share and access digital files in the cloud, the 25-year-old CEO has taken on corporate behemoths such as Amazon and Microsoft.

And business is booming. Since the start of 2010, the company's workforce has bloomed 85% to 120 employees; revenues are projected to triple from last year; and the service now boasts more than 4.5 million users and 60,000 client companies, including Dell, T-Mobile, Panasonic, and MTV. Currently, Box.net serves around 500,000,000 files annually--or about 600 terabytes of data.

We caught up with Levie, who discussed his inspiration from Steve Jobs, support from Mark Cuban, and why he dropped out of college.

What is your big idea?

The big idea behind Box is that sharing data in the enterprise is very, very difficult today. If you can think of all the people you work and collaborate with on a regular basis, and all the data you create, the software didn't make that very easy. We have things like Microsoft SharePoint, which is very complicated. But now with the cloud, we can solve these problems like never before. We can finally build really simple solutions for the enterprise that are incredibly cost-effective for any size business.

What was the inspiration behind your idea?

We were in college at the time--it was in 2005. It was very, very difficult even then to just share documents or PowerPoint presentations. It was very obvious that there had to be a better way to do this. That's when we decided to develop Box.

You were also interning at Miramax in college, right?

Damn, you know too much!

Ha, sorry. How did you turn from intern at Miramax to founder of Box?

I was initially interested in the cross-section of media, entertainment, and technology. I interned at Miramax and subsequently at Paramount because I was really curious about the future of entertainment--how were we going to get films online? While the inspiration for Box didn't come from that experience directly, it was very obvious that bigger businesses had a lot of slow processes and cumbersome technology.

My co-founder was at Duke at the time. I was at USC. We grew up together in Seattle. When we started developing Box, it just started to click. It's funny: We now actually have a large part of the entertainment industry using Box for media collaboration, from record labels sharing media assets to networks for television footage.

When did it click? What was the first milestone you reached when you knew that it was going to work?

It really clicked that this was a big opportunity when we received an angel investment from Mark Cuban, the owner of the Dallas Mavericks. He was really excited, and that helped encourage us to become more serious about the operation--so serious that we left school to work on Box full-time.

My co-founder Dylan Smith and I left our junior year of college to move to the Bay Area. To the horror of our friends' parents, we actually had two other friends drop out of college to work on the product. The four of us were just working non-stop growing Box.

Dropping out of school to start one's own business is a complicated decision that many young entrepreneurs face. How did you come to terms with that decision? VC Mark Suster recommends JFDI. What is your advice to others facing this dilemma? 

My acronym is WWSJD: What Would Steve Jobs Do? We realized that this was way bigger than ourselves. There is going to be a massive transition to the cloud. There's going to be so much opportunity in the enterprise. It really felt like a once in a lifetime opportunity.

As soon as we weighed that against, well, going to class every day, the choice was very obvious. At least for me. I was never the most studious person. I felt this was our time to capture the next computing wave, and I didn't want to look back and realize we'd missed that opportunity.

What do your parents do? Were they hesitant about you dropping out? 

My dad is a chemical engineer, and my mom was a teacher. They were pretty serious about education, but I always thought about things a little bit differently.

Did you have a favorite class or professor in college, or was school just not for you?

I am pro-education, by the way. Let that be clear. But yes, there was a marketing class. It was great because one of its components was to do a research project on any kind of digital technology space. So I chose online storage and the cloud, and I actually ended up doubling up on work for Box.

Box has grown tremendously. Is there any other company or CEO you look to as a model to guide you?

It's hard to point to one single company or individual. Companies like DreamWorks for the products they put out. Steve Jobs is really great at delivering great products and experiences, too. While some of the business practices of Larry Ellison are obviously controversial, the sheer results and execution of Oracle is amazing.

For inspiration, I guess there's a little bit of Jack Welch, Steve Jobs, and Larry Ellison.

I don't mean to put you on the spot--

--I'm not single.

Ha. If you had 60 seconds with President Obama what would you tell him or ask him?

I try not to be too political because much of this feels out of my hands. The issues that face us that are politically relevant are education and immigration reform. We can't invest enough in education. I'm certainly no libertarian when it comes to this. It's not a cliché to say that we are absolutely competing on a world stage with countries that are way ahead of us in terms of science and research.

I think immigration reform is also important. We need to have more talented people able to come here. We do a lot of hiring--a number of our engineers are from France, India, and China. They work out of Palo Alto and get to come to school here. We want to encourage the best talent to come here as well as producing that top talent ourselves.

What would you be doing if you didn't start a cloud computing company?

Yeah, well, I'd probably start a cloud computing company.

EyeSwipe Nano: Cheap, Dollar Bill-Size Iris Scanner Replaces Card Reader Apps

BY AUSTIN CARR

Before, iris scanners were the stuff of movies: dusty laser beams glazing over eyeballs in futuristic sci-fi flicks. The technology in real life was too slow, clunky, and expensive to be viable. But biometrics R&D firm Hoyos Corporation (formerly known as Global Rainmakers) has changed that, bringing the potential of a Minority Report-like future one step closer. Months ago, the company began building the "most secure city in the world" after one of the largest cities in Mexico agreed to fill its streets with Hoyos' scanners. And today, Hoyos unveiled its smallest, least expensive, and most viable product yet: the EyeSwipe Nano.

At just 5.5 inches wide, 4 inches tall, and 3 inches deep, the companies latest iris scanner is not only a quarter of the size of the device's previous iteration, the EyeSwipe Mini, but a quarter of its cost. The unit's price is just $1,499, and using the same technology as Hoyos' suite of biometrics products, the Nano can capture irises at a distance, in motion, at the rate of 20 people per minute. (Head here for our videos, images, and detailed run-down of Hoyos' technology.)

"This is going to put the ability to do a biometric scan in the hands of virtually everyone in the world for a price that is comparable and competitive to card readers," says companyCDO Jeff Carter, explaining that orders at volume will make the Nano a sub-thousand dollar product. "The Nano has roughly the footprint of a dollar bill, and I think it's going to allow us to target virtually everything--any applications where you'd have a typical card reader, whether entry to office buildings or banks or apartments."

Carter says the company's scanners have already received "tons and tons of business" from around the globe, and pre-orders for the Nano, which begin today, will ship by the end of January. Between the EyeSwipe Nano and EyeSwipe Mini, it almost feels the company is modeling its products and names after Apple's--don't the iPod Nano and EyeSwipe Nano have a similar ring? And perhaps it's no coincidence: Thanks to the device's shrinking size, Carter says the companies next step is entering the mobile space, allowing Big Brother to scan your eyes on the go.

Maybe they'll call that the EyeSwipe Touch.

As a side-note, Carter also gave Fast Company readers an update on the progress of itsscanners' implementation in Leon, Mexico:

"Everything is going well," he explains. "They have all the products. They've just about wrapping up Phase I, and are giving us another order for Phase II to add scanners to more buildings and government offices."