BY TOM WALSH
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST
April 11, 2010

Spring is here, the grass is suddenly green, and Detroit has some new faces in interesting places.

There’s Johnny Damon patrolling left field at Comerica Park, a former nemesis when he wore the uniforms of the Red Sox and the hated Yankees, now a beacon of hope for the 2010 Tigers.

At General Motors, there’s a new chief financial officer, Chris Liddell, who comes to us from New Zealand by way of Seattle, where he did a five-year tour as CFO of Microsoft.

When he served up his first batch of GM numbers last week, a $3.4-billion loss for the last quarter of 2009, Liddell did so with an upbeat spin — positive cash flow is back and profit is possible this year — but also with some welcome reserve.

He wants to rebuild GM’s junk-rated credit to investment grade, but admits “that is likely to take some years.” And he’s reluctant to predict quick big profits for GM just nine months after Chapter 11 bankruptcy.

“I think there’s a danger of overpromising and underdelivering,” Liddell says. “When we put runs up on the board, we will come out and tell you about it.” Amen to that.

Another newcomer is Matt Wise, 40, CEO of ePrize, the interactive promotions outfit in Pleasant Ridge. Wise comes from a turnaround at Q Interactive of Chicago, an Internet marketing firm that was sold to a private equity group in 2008. At ePrize, he takes the reins from Josh Linkner, the founder who remains chairman.

ePrize was a shooting star pioneer of Internet contests, growing from 35 employees in 2003 to 350 four years later. But then growth stalled with the double whammy of the 2008 economic meltdown and the curse of every hot startup — how to revive growth and scale up to the next level after encountering that first bump in the road.

Wise told his ePrize crew, now 243 people, that he’d spend his first 90 days learning and listening, charting a new direction and then making changes. He’s midway through that process now.

Lastly comes news that Tom Wilson, former CEO of Palace Sports & Entertainment who signed on for a similar role with the Ilitch family in Detroit, has coaxed a few key PS&E staffers to follow him from Auburn Hills to Detroit.

John Ciszewski, executive VP of sales at the Palace, has taken the same role and title at Team Ilitch. And word is that Craig Turnbull, the branding guru who made “Goin’ to Work” the mantra of Pistons basketball a few years back, is also heading downtown.

Alan Ostfield, now the Palace CEO, isn’t exactly happy about his former boss Wilson poaching his people, but he chooses to focus on the bright side. “It’s not unexpected,” Ostfield says, “and in a sense it’s an opportunity. We have some great younger people who can step into new roles now. All good organizations need changes, or they run the risk of doing the same thing over and over and getting stale.”

He’s right, of course. And Detroit can certainly use the change that a few fresh faces in new places might bring.

Read article at freep.com

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To Launch Gain’s “Better Together” Campaign, Melissa Joan Hart and Soleil Moon Frye Help Illustrate the Unusually Good Scent Experience of Using Gain’s Matching Laundry Detergent and Fabric Softener

CINCINNATI, March 30, 2010 /PRNewswire/ — When it comes to life’s special occasions and everyday activities, experiences are more joyful when shared with a friend. With this in mind, Gain kicks off its “Better Together” campaign with celebrity best friends, Melissa Joan Hart and Soleil Moon Frye. The irresistible duo will remind women that like true friends, Gain’s matching detergent and fabric softener are even better when paired together. On IloveGain.com, Gain fans can upload their personal stories, play interactive friendship games and hear more about Melissa and Soleil’s most favorite shared memories.

Most members of Generation Y and the surrounding age groups know Melissa Joan Hart and Soleil Moon Frye as actresses from popular television shows in the 80’s and 90’s. Since those childhood years, the duo has remained close friends, sharing everything from early days of stardom to current joys of motherhood.

“We’re pleased to partner with Gain to celebrate close friendships in a fun and light-hearted way,” says Melissa Joan Hart. “Soleil and I have been friends since we were children, and we can certainly attest that our experiences have been better when shared together.”

“Melissa and I have so many fantastic memories, and it’s been really great to be able to share these stories with Gain fans across the country,” says Soleil Moon Frye.

Between now and June 30, 2010, friends can visit IloveGain.com to enter for a chance to win a trip for two to Los Angeles, CA to create their own memories together. There’s no purchase necessary and the Sweet Escapes sweepstakes ends June 30, 2010. Visit http://gain.promo.eprize.com/superduper/public/fulfillment/rules.pdf for Official Rules. Gain’s website and the Gain Page on Facebook(R) will also be the place to paste pictures of you and a pal into a “Dance Duet” video to see your personalized, joyful Gain characters come to life on your screen. Additionally, consumers can become a fan of Gain’s Facebook page here to learn more about Gain news and offers.

About Gain(R)

Gain detergent is currently available at drug, grocery and mass stores. Gain is available in liquid detergent, powdered detergent, fabric softener and dryer sheets. Gain comes in three scent collections: Fresh and Clean, Joyful Expressions and Soothing Sensations. To learn more about Gain, visit www.ilovegain.com.

About Procter & Gamble

Four billion times a day, P&G brands touch the lives of people around the world. The company has one of the strongest portfolios of trusted, quality, leadership brands, including Pampers(R), Tide(R), Ariel(R), Always(R), Whisper(R), Pantene(R), Mach3(R), Bounty(R), Dawn(R), Gain(R), Pringles(R), Charmin(R), Downy(R), Lenor(R), Iams(R), Crest(R), Oral-B(R), Duracell(R), Olay(R), Head & Shoulders(R), Wella(R), Gillette(R), Braun(R) and Fusion(R). The P&G community includes approximately 135,000 employees working in about 80 countries worldwide. Please visit http://www.pg.com for the latest news and in-depth information about P&G and its brands.

Facebook(R) is a registered trademark of Facebook Inc.

SOURCE P&G

Copyright (C) 2010 PR Newswire. All rights reserved

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Cover Stories: www.corpmagazine.com

How interactive innovator ePrize has changed promotions
By Michael F. Carmichael
March 18, 2010

It used to be if you wanted to win a lifetime supply of Cheerios or a new car you had to fill out a form with your name and address, send in a specially-marked boxtop or something similar and hope for lightning to strike.

That was the way it was for years. Until 1999, when lightning struck Josh Linkner.

That was the year he founded ePrize and brought sweepstakes and other promotions online and changed the way marketers and customers interact.

1999 was when companies were jumping on the dot-com bandwagon and many of them fell off not long afterwards. How did Linkner and ePrize not only stay on, but catch the brass ring?

“First of all,” he replies, “we had a real business model that met a real business need. A lot of companies were doing things that were consumer-facing and didn’t make that much of an impact online. In our case, we really helped reinvent an industry. The promotion industry was an old school, good-old-boy network and we really shook it up. We took it online and changed the model – which benefitted our customers.”

ePrize today works with 77 of the top 100 marketers and most have been repeat customers for years. If you want a lifetime supply of Cheerios or a new General Motors car you go online, fill in the required information and discover somewhere in the fine print that the sweepstakes is managed by ePrize.

With sweepstakes and other promotions showing up everywhere – even the popular “Who Do You Think You Are,” an NBC television program that follows celebrities as they track their ancestral roots, has a sweepstakes run by ePrize for the sponsor Ancestry.com – Linkner has tapped into a basic human trait.

“The idea of a chance to win, as a motivator of human behavior,” he explains, “has been working for a hundred years. People respond to that. In the old school it was much more limited, it wasn’t interactive, it wasn’t instantaneous, it wasn’t a brand-immersive experience. “What we did was totally recharge it. Now, when someone plays a chance to win promotion online it can be a very rich brand-immersive experience. There can be flash demos, or product information or other rich content,” Linkner continues.

In the offline world promotion entrants’ information had to be manually transcribed and somehow sorted if the sponsor of the promotion wanted to add them to a mailing list, for instance. In today’s ePrize world not only does the person who wants to win the promotion enter his or her own data, that data can be instantly analyzed “to serve up content that’s much more customized to the person,” Linkner explains. “So, if I’m 39, live in Detroit and have two kids, I might have one promotional experience. A female from Miami, who’s 22, with no kids, might have a very different promotional experience. Offline, it’s a one-size-fits-all approach while digitally we have a much more robust opportunity.”

There are many more opportunities open to clients of ePrize, Linkner says. “We can say ‘come every day and play an interactive game and you can be an instant winner,’ so the level of connectedness between a brand and a consumer goes up dramatically by using digital technology.”

ePrize “runs hundreds of promotions every month for major brands and on any given day we might have stuff launching for Disney and Miller Beer and Citibank,” according to Linkner. There’s a very good reason for that. “Overall, the ROI on digital promotions is terrific. That’s why our clients keep coming back. Seventy to 80 percent of our business is from existing clients. It’s one thing to get someone to want to try the cool new flavor of the week, but it’s another to get them coming back year after year. They see there’s a real business value.”

Linkner is asked if only Fortune 500 companies can benefit from ePrize promotions. “We do have promotions that are tailored to smaller companies. We launched a ‘self-serve’ templated approach, but that was a little early in the marketplace so it’s not currently available. We do, however, have a number of programs geared to small businesses. The type of work we do probably wouldn’t benefit a local dentist, but organizations such as the Henry Ford Museum, La-Z-Boy and Quicken Loans do benefit from our services,” he explains.

ePrize now offers clients much more than sweepstakes. For Coca Cola, their largest client and one of their oldest, they handle the My Coke Rewards program – the one that has those hard-to-read numbers on the underside of bottle caps. “It’s a points-based loyalty program,” Linkner says. “The more Coke products you drink the more points you earn and the more rewards you can get. That kind of digital loyalty program couldn’t happen just by sending in a bottle cap through the mail.”

To grow, ePrize “has to be on the cutting edge of digital innovation,” says Linkner. “We can’t rest on our laurels of having invented online sweepstakes. We have to say ‘what’s the next next thing?’ so we spend a lot of our energy, talent and brainpower focusing on that. We run programs on any device you can think of – mobile applications, iPods – we’re doing a lot in social media with hundreds of promotions on Facebook and Twitter.”

Linkner continues, “The way we look at it is, the core essence of what we do – motivating human behavior – is always going to be in need of marketers. We take that core essence and translate it to whatever technology trends may be happening. People can be rewarded when they post an instant-win or trivia game on their homepage in Facebook where others can play. Or, a company can do that on their fan page. We have virtual bumper stickers where people can promote a favorite brand and earn chances to win for doing so. There are a lot of fun things that people can do that are sponsored by brands and offer them chances to win something.”

Linkner was the founder of ePrize and until now was its chairman and CEO. This month marked a transition for him as he turned over the CEO position to Matt Wise, formally president and CEO of ad network company Q Network. Continuing as chairman, Linkner has now become the company’s Chief Innovation Officer, charging himself with coming up with that “next next thing.”

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