Client: America Online
Challenge: To capture, and keep, the title of #1 Online Service Provider
Solution: Think big, be aggressive, conquer all media channels
When America Online came to ParadyszMatera in 1993, their membership
base was 160,000. Today that number is over 33,000,000. Their success is
the most important consumer marketing story of the past decade. Yet only
a few years ago, AOL was just one of many burgeoning online services.
What made the difference? Foresight. Risk-taking. Aggressiveness. And an
undeniable service that gave everyday people exciting and easy access to
this revolutionary online technology. AOL believed correctly that
people would not wait for online access to trickle down into their lives
- if they could experience it now, they would want it now. Hence the ubiquitous
AOL disk - and its jaw-dropping success.
ParadyszMatera helped AOL become the first web-based enterprise to
go after consumers via direct mail on a massive strategic scale. Accomplishing
this feat required a customized program married with a complete set of ParadyszMatera
services -- constant competitive analysis and tracking, new market assessment,
database applications, continual budget forecasting, intensive cost negotiations,
historical analysis and interpretation, statistical modeling and breakthrough
new media creation to forge new channels and woo customers.
But ParadyszMatera also inspired one very human element that AOL
perhaps needed more than anything else. Trust.
To grow at the rate they
needed to grow, AOL could not afford to withhold information from
their partners. So they grilled us. Then they let us in.
At a recent meeting,
an AOL senior-level marketing person said, "When I first came to
AOL, I didn't understand why we only worked with one direct marketing
partner - but now I see why this one-on-one relationship is so successful,
and I wouldn't have it any other way. AOL and ParadyszMatera have
a true partnership in every sense of the word."
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