#BackToBackBay

Promoboxx is proud to announce our support of the Back To Back Bay campaign to help those retailers affected by the Boston Marathon bombings. These retailers have been closed for over a week, and many will be closed for much longer. Please click to view a map of those affected. To help, please share their page with your friends and family, “Like” their Facebook page, follow them on Twitter, or join their mailing list, but most importantly, spend some money at their locations.

Support Back To Back Bay

At Promoboxx we have ten core values, but the most important is “Believe in Retailers.” Hearing how retailers like Marathon Sports, Sugar Heaven, The Lenox Hotel, Forum Restaurant, and many others, quickly pushed aside their businesses to save lives, comfort the wounded, and then support law enforcement, our belief was confirmed and we thank you.

For those retailers affected, please reach out to support@promoboxx.com if you need any help, anything.

So, please support these businesses, and please continue to support local retail because we need them.

Thank you for your support! #BostonStrong

BC

Ben Carcio - CEO, Promoboxx
Promoboxx – Brands and Retailers. Connected.
ben at promoboxx dot com

We’re excited to announce that Promoboxx has been nominated in the “Best New Start-Up” category by New England Venture Capital Association (NEVCA) and their NEVY awards. It is great to be nominated alongside our TechStars Boston 2011 buddies at Kinvey. Srav and I sat across from each other during the program, so it is great to see them nominated (luckily in non-competitive categories). We’ll have to debate whether its better to be “Best New” or “Hot.”

In addition to Kinvey, there are other Promoboxx friends nominated, such as investor/board member Nicole Stata, investor/landlord Dave Balter, my poker buddies Wayne Chang, Jeff Seibert and Ariel Diaz (Boundless), and TechStars mentors Will Herman, Ty Danco, and Joe Caruso. There are also Boston people/companies that we look up to, such as marketing heavy-weights Dharmesh Shah & Brian Halligan (Hubspot), Tom Erickson (Acquia), the ecommerce killers at Wayfair and Demandware, the Facebook ad gurus at Nanigans, and many more.

Despite the occasional uninformed missive from afar, Boston has an amazing and growing tech eco-system. We’re proud to be a part of it.

See you at the event!

BC

The legendary comedy of Mitch Hedberg (1968 – 2005) is often played at Promoboxx HQ. So, it was cool to discover that one of his jokes nails the Promoboxx benefits.

Every McDonald’s commercial ends the same way, right? “Prices and participation may vary.” I wanna open a McDonald’s and not participate in anything. I wanna be a stubborn McDonald’s owner. Cheeseburgers? Nope. We got spaghetti! And blankets!

Mitch got how independent retailers go rogue in their local marketing efforts, and how national advertising teams often have no idea what their retailers are doing. So, imagine if you were a customer at Mitch’s store? You’d leave laughing, but with a pretty skewed perspective of the McDonald’s brand.

Retailer Participation Matters:

It kills me to see ad disclaimers that say, “valid at participating retailers only.” Why don’t they know who’s participating?  What if a customer walks into retailer asking about a promotion, but gets a confused look? Retail anxiety is high enough, consumers don’t need to be concerned with brand-to-retailer communication issues. The current state of communication between the national brand and their retailers is not efficient. There may be a national sales conference or a few conference calls, but nothing that strengthens the brand-to-retailer relationship. What to do?

Our recommended approach is simple, send them communication asking them to participate in a promotion, explain to them why its a good idea, than ask them to say yes (or no), and BOOM you have an accurate list of the participating retailers.

When Independent Retailers Go Rogue:

Rogue brand marketing by local independent retailers is a consequence of having independent people sell your products. This happens all the way from the “mom and pops,” to strong franchise networks like McDonalds, to store managers of vertically integrated retailers like Walmart. The more you delegate marketing decisions to your resellers, the more likely those making the decisions will stray from your brand message.

Again, our recommended approach is very simple. Provide your retailers with materials that keep them aligned with you national promotion, while giving them parts of the campaign to customize and highlight their independence. Respecting who they are, even just a little, goes a long way. Your retailers will be happy because you are providing them content that drives more in-store traffic. You’ll be happy because they will be selling more of your brand.

My final recommendation, is to first listen to Mitch Hedberg, he’s amazing. But, more specifically, apply some realistic best practices to your promotion that maximize both retailer and consumer participation.

- BC

This post was supposed to be a thank you for last week’s Boston Holiday Tech Co-Party, but the tragic events in Newtown, Connecticut have certainly changed the mood. These events have hit me personally on a number of levels, as a parent, as a New Englander, and least importantly, as a start-up CEO. The Boston start-up community is amazing, but sometimes we congratulate ourselves a bit too much for solving the cool problems, while not doing enough to solve the real ones. That said, there’s not a more inclusive, friendly, and caring group of people than the Boston tech community. Which is why this decision so easy, and so obvious.

Source cnn.com

First some background, each year Promoboxx and a group of local start-ups (Localytics, Evertrue, The Tap Lab, Zagster, Indie Ambassador, Kinvey)  host a holiday “co-party” for tech start-ups too small to have their own. It’s a fun celebratory event, that draws over 300 people from 33 Boston area start-ups. The attendee and sponsor support for our holiday party was so amazing that we ended up with some extra money. Just last week, I was chatting with Raj, Jesse, Dave, Ryan, Ben M-L, and Srav about what to do with the remaining money. Ideas included saving for next year, planning another co-party, or donating it all to a charity. Given the amazing group of people behind this party, they all agreed to donate the money. But, to what cause? Unfortunately, the events of last week gave us an obvious choice.

This is why I humbly announce a donation on behalf of our co-hosts, co-sponsors, and the Boston area start-ups in attendance in the amount of $4,108.76 to the United Way of Western Connecticut. The money will go towards supporting those who were effected by the tragedy in Newtown. It’s a small amount, but one that we hope can help bring some comfort to those affected, and confirm what President Obama meant in saying “Newtown – you are not alone.”

Lastly, I’d like to thank the following people/companies for making the event, and this donation possible:

Our Co-Hosts:
Raj Aggarwal – Localytics
Jesse Bardo – Evertrue
David Bisceglia – The Tap Lab
Ryan Light – Zagster
Ben Maitland-Lewis – Indie Ambassador
Sravish Sridhar – Kinvey

The Co-Sponsors:

Morse Barnes-Brown & Pendleton
Goodwin Procter
Launch Capital
Avalon Ventures
North Bridge Venture Partners
Boston Seed Capital
Jones Lang LaSalle
Microsoft
General Catalyst Partners
Polaris Venture Partners
Devonshire Recruiting and Consulting Partners

The Start-Ups:

Promoboxx
thetaplab
Zagster
Localytics
Kinvey
Evertrue
Indie Ambassador
Help Scout
Kibits
myenergy
appswell
impulsesave
intelligent.ly
marginize
Techstars
socialsci
Dashbell
crowdly
smarterer
murfie
wiggio
coachup
ubersense
Yesware
backupify
Project11
Boston Startup School
crave labs
fetchnotes
Libboo
TerrribleLabs
Integrated Adventures
ovuline
Seth Minkin
LearnLaunch
race menu

To be fair, our business model doesn’t jump off the Keynote for most investors. Without understanding the difficulties that manufacturing brands face in helping their retailers with local online marketing, our market opportunity doesn’t seem obvious. So, our initial investors were a brave group that understood enough of the pain, while believing in our teams ability to make it work. Back then our few brand customers were great, but they were small (ahem…Barney Butter). Since then, we’ve added bigger brands like Chevrolet, Volkswagen, Trek Bicycles, Reebok, and a bunch of brands we can’t even talk about yet. You could say we’ve achieved some market validation, and that it’s time to scale. So, we went back to those same investors, and the response was awesome. Not to mention…they brought their friends.

This is why we’re excited to announce an investment round of $1.35 Million, to complete what we’re labeling our Series Seed. In a world of “who has the bigger round,” it’s relatively small. But, it’s the perfect amount for us, and allows us to build a better product and reach more customers, all while keeping our future options wide open.

Our investors include Launch Capital, Boston Seed, SK Ventures, Common Angels, Stage 1 Ventures and over 30 individual investors that include Jean Hammond, Walt Winshall, Michael Mark, Mike Dornbrook, Rich Greenfield, Adam Berrey, Dave Balter, David Kaufmann, and much too more to list. As always, a huge thanks to our first investor, Tech Stars, especially Katie Rae, Reed Sturtevant, and David Cohen. They were always available, always helpful, and proof that the TechStars program extends far beyond Demo Day.

A special note to the Promoboxxers. They say a start-up CEO’s primary job is raising money, and you can raise money by showing traction, so thank you all for making my job incredibly easy. First, to my co-founders Dan, Sonciary, and Jamie, then to Janet the sales machine, then the first big wave of team members Karl, Hope and Emma, and finally to the new wave – Benjamin, Don, Spencer, Julia, and Eliza. You guys rock.

To sum it up, the core value of our business model is about combining local retailers together to create something much more valuable to the brands. So, by working with our angels/local micro-seeds and our team we’ve started to create something greater than the sum of its parts. Onward!

Ben

About Promoboxx

Promoboxx is a brand-to-retailer marketing platform that allows brands to launch co-branded, customized online campaigns with their retailers in order to strengthen relationships, localize national content, and reach more consumers. Promoboxx clients include Chevrolet, Reebok, Trek and Volkswagen. Promoboxx is a Boston TechStars 2011 company, and has received funding from Launch Capital, Boston Seed, SK Ventures, Brand Ventures and Common Angels.

Position Overview

In this role you’ll be responsible for leading all the product marketing and management efforts at Promoboxx. We’re a startup, so you’ll need to do the hands-on work yourself when you begin, but we expect that over time you’ll build a team of world class product management and marketing professionals.

We’re looking for someone who can scale with the company and be a key partner with the CEO to drive the ongoing development of the business strategy including everything from product direction to messaging to pricing to sales channel strategy. In this role you’ll be a senior member of the executive team and play a central building the company.

The ideal candidate will have a proven track recorded in product marketing and management for SaaS businesses. The candidate will have demonstrated the ability to go from doing the work to building a team in high-growth environment. We’d like to see experience in marketing automation, consumer marketing strategies, and/or retail.

Responsibilities

• - Drive market research to gather requirements, identify market opportunities, and understand market needs and requirements
• - Conduct competitive analysis to underst the market landscape and how to create sustainable competitive differentiation for Promoboxx
• - Develop business strategy for product, pricing, positioning and messaging, partnerships, sales channel strategy and marketing communications.
• - Work with the CEO and finance team to develop marketing sizing estimates, market segmentation and a revenue forecasts.
• - Maintain the product backlog and work with the engineering team to drive the direction of product development and ensure the delivery of products that meet customer needs.
• - Coordinate product releases through sales, services, and marketing communication teams.
• - Develop product marketing materials, collateral, sales tools and messaging for sales and marketing communications.
• - Serve as a spokesperson for the company by evangelizing the vision and products through blogs, speaking events, public relations and and customer meetings.

Experience

• - 5+ years of experience doing product marketing and management
• - Demonstrated ability to drive business strategy (product, pricing, positioning, etc.)
• - Proven ability to work as an individual contributor and to hire a team
• - Analytical skills and experience building financial models and revenue forecasting
• - Strong written and verbal communication skills
• - Industry experience in marketing automation, retail and SaaS businesses
• - MBA is strongly preferred but not a requirement
• - History of successfully operating in fast-paced, high-growth startups

Contact

If you’re interested in talking more about the role, please email ben@promboxx.com.

From the CEO’s Soapbox… 

I’m going to continue my early childhood television blog theme, and try to implore brands to use Promoboxx with a public service announcement, like one of those NBC “The More You Know” PSAs. The script would go something like this:

{Cue “The More You Know” intro, then sappy piano music}

“Hey national manufacturing brands, so much of your amazing national marketing skips your local retailers. Not only are your local retailers your biggest customers from a revenue perspective, but they have clout in their local community that you could really leverage. In fact, they need your help to market their stores better. So, just as you use television, radio, or print, use your retailers to help spread the word. The best part, not only will they spread your products message for free, but they’ll thank you for doing it.”

{Cue “The More You Know” outro}

I think this could help a lot of people. What do you think?

BC

Ben Carcio, CEO
ben at prombooxx dot com

We’re thrilled to be hosting a FutureM panel called “Small Start-Ups Can Work With Big Brands.” The panel is on Tuesday, October 23, at the Hynes Convention Center in Boston. For this panel we wanted to break from the typical start-up pitch sessions of “here’s my company, please invest,” to presentations by marketing start-ups who have worked with big brands. Each company will be given 7-10 minutes to present a case-study on how their companies were able to close and succesfuly work with a big brand.

Here are the speakers and companies participating:

From the CEO’s Soapbox…

Bugs Bunny – Wackiki Wabbit – 1938

I remember this Bugs Bunny cartoon where these two guys get stranded on an island. After a while they start to imagine each other as food, one a hamburger, the other a hot dog. So, I think of that and laugh anytime I see an online marketing company like HubSpot or Contant Contact trying to charge small retail businesses for online marketing tools. They’re looking at these retailers as hamburgers, when they’re just busy people who have neither the time or the skills required to use their tools effectively.

This is why Promoboxx works with manufacturing brands to provide online marketing campaigns to their small retailers for FREE. The retailers are already paying enough to stock the goods they sell, so why charge them $29 per month here or $99 a month there, when brands should be helping them for nothing. This works because brands have a vested interest in making sure their retailers are supported, because when the retailer sells something both the brand and the retailer benefits.

So, for all your small business marketing platforms stranded on the your little islands, don’t eat our retailers please.

BC

Ben Carcio, CEO
ben at prombooxx dot com

It’s official: the web has just sent Pitbull to Kodiak, Alaska.

Across the web people are commenting on the failed promotion between Pitbull, the multi-platinum recording artist, and Sheets, the dissolvable tongue strips brand. At the center of the promotion is Walmart, which teamed up with Sheets to highlight “My Local Walmart” on Facebook. In the end, it appears to be an embarrassing miscalculation for all participants.

Well, we think its great! For us, its further validation that brands and retailers can work work together to create amazing traction in the market.

What Happened?

The promotion kicked off as a way for Sheets to better connect with local customers by “liking” their nearby Walmart Facebook page. For Sheets, it makes sense as this is where their energy and sleep dissolvable strips are sold. A few months back, Walmart partnered with Facebook to create individualized Facebook pages for each of their local stores in an initiave called “My Local Walmart.” Once created, each store could leverage their unique Facebook page with national promotions. Enter Sheets and Armando Christian Perez aka “Pitbull.”

The HuffPost sums it up best:

A writer for The Boston Phoenix newspaper thought it’d be funny to send Pitbull to the most remote Walmart possible, and is encouraging people to “like” the Walmart in Kodiak.

Without a doubt, both Sheets and Walmart miscalculated how Internet-goers would react to the Pitbull promotion. Granted they may have chosen the wrong star in Pitbull, it still validates how brands and retailers can work together to create a huge impact online.

The Winners

Walmart: Like every other store, they understand that people make stronger connections to their local businesses than national chains, even if that local business is, well a Walmart. With this promotion, they effectively took a national advertising campaign and challenged their local stores to participate through Facebook in order to get Pitbull to appear at their location (and gain thousands of new fans in the process). As much as others like to criticize them, Walmart still leads the field in innovating the local buying experience from a national brand.

Sheets: They got huge exposure and they’re more than happy with it: besides, their product fits the “any press is good press” mantra. Sheets realizes how bringing foot traffic into physical stores is the most important outcome they could’ve hoped for alongside Walmart–and they’re now bringing Pitbull to Alaska in a wild marketing excursion.

The (Lone) Loser

Pitbull: We’re sorry. You may have  jumped the shark with this one; see you on VH1 in a few years. The fact that so many people wanted to send you to one of the farthest, most remote reaches of the country, can’t be good thing for your career. But for lyrics like “Go, yeah you baby Back, ooh you groovy baby,” we also thank you–at least you’re a good sport in the video below. {Full disclosure: my wife loves Pitbull}

Conclusion

More than anything, this (somewhat) failed promotion evidences how Sheets and Walmart could find huge marketing opportunities by working together. In fact, Sheets could even partner with other retailers to further create channel awareness with their retailers. By engaging your retailers with a valuable and understandable offer, along with a little help from prankster Internet-comedians, a small brand like Sheets has been catapulted into national attention. Enjoy your trip, Pitbull.

//Ben
ben at promoboxx dot com