|
Adrian: Can you tell us a little bit about yourself?
|
|
Lindsay: I was born in Manhattan, and I’ve lived here my entire life. New York is a great city.
|
|
Adrian: Do you work out of your home or do you work out of an office?
|
|
Lindsay: I work from home on Roosevelt Island for Primary Ads and obviously, Ad Femme. Primary Ads is located in Freehold, New Jersey, which would be about a four-hour commute for me every day, which would be not so fun.
|
|
Adrian: In a period of a month, working with Primary Ads, how often do you end up seeing them face-to-face?
|
|
Lindsay: Actually I only see them once every 2 -3 months. The last time I saw them was in May.
|
|
Adrian: Impressive. You’re currently working with Primary Ads, own Ad Femme and you also do web design consulting. Why don’t you tell us a bit about what you used to do?
|
|
Lindsay: For a couple of years, before I stepped into the online ad world, I worked as an event planner for non-profits within the New York metro area. Then September 11th happened. All of the fundraisers I had planned got cancelled or pushed back about six months to a year and I found myself unemployed for the first time since I was 12 years old. I looked for new positions at different types of companies, and I decided that I would try something new. A friend of mine referred me to a company called Venture Direct, and I started working there in 2001. From there I was able to learn about all the different facets of online advertising – when I started I didn’t even know what a banner was. I worked there for a little while, got promoted a few times, and then a good friend of mine, along with an investor and current President, started a company called Innovation Ads.
Innovation Ads is an interactive advertising agency. After a while, I decided to move on and started working for Permission Data. They hired me originally to be their Director of Partner Relations, which basically means I managed their lead generation broker division. After a while I acquired the position of Director of Marketing and Partner Relations, by far the longest job title I’ve ever held. I worked on creating their lead gen websites, buying media, driving traffic to the sites, optimizing it, doing a little bit of sales on the side. Although I loved my job and the people I worked with (a little too much), I left there last year and started working for Primary Ads in August as their Business Development Manager. In addition I launched Ad Femme, Inc. in February of this year.
|
|
Adrian: Okay. So, at trade shows there have been a lot of skimpy models being used to get guys to come in and talk to sales people at booths. I’m interested to hear your point of view about this.
|
|
Lindsay: Initially, I understood why a company would want to have “booth babes” to attract male customers to their booths, but I’ve realized, after going up and speaking to these women, that they have no idea what the companies that they’re representing actually do. Whoops. As a result, those companies are getting the additional foot traffic because of the booth babes, but the traffic is not quality. Having women who are hot, but have no idea what they are talking about shines a very negative light on the company they represent and ends up devaluing what the company has to offer. So no, it doesn’t bother me, it just shows me what sort of company they really are before I even walk up and talk to them. Sometimes I actually get a kick out of talking to those women, even though I know I am wasting my time, their ignorance can be entertaining.
|
|
Adrian: The women that you talk to; do most feel the same as you?
|
|
Lindsay: Well from the ones that I’ve spoken to, I’d say it’s about 70 percent of the women feel strongly that it’s really just a bad way to go about getting business. There’s so many other ways that you can get and keep business. There have actually been a couple of articles written for Ad Femme about this.
One point that comes up after trade shows is that being a decently attractive woman in our industry is actually an undeniable advantage point. This creates a conflict. We’re trying to establish ourselves as respectful businesswomen and not as eye candy, but at the same time being an attractive woman in a male dominated industry is a good “in” for us. Rather than standing there to look pretty, we stand there to get business at booths, but it doesn’t hurt that some of us are good looking. There is a lot of back and forth going on like, should we use this to our advantage? Should we not?
To get the male perspective on this, we did a What Men Think section for Ad Femme, and got some really amazing, interesting feedback.
One man said, “Men and women sometimes differ in their perspectives on business and creative issues, but in today’s competitive business world a healthy mix of views can really help companies succeed.” So that was a nice, positive, motivating point.
Another man said, “I do not appreciate or work with companies that actively use ‘booth babes’.”
Another man said that, “Women are not given enough credit in certain industries such as financial services, real estate and until recently, advertising but that’s changed in our more recent days.”
You can check out the archived newsletters on AdFemme.com to read the What Men Think special edition.
The reason that I started Ad Femme wasn’t to bash booth babes or to create a no boys society, it was to create a community of empowered women in advertising. Ad Femme functions as a social and professional networking portal for women in our space, where we can chat, network, vent and learn from each other.
|
|
Adrian: What is behind Ad Femme and what was the thinking behind founding it? Where do you see it going over the next couple of years?
|
|
Lindsay: Ad Femme basically started as an inkling of a thought, probably close to about a year ago. I’d written several articles about lead generation for Digital Moses and really just loved writing and interacting with people and having them ping me on IM and say, “Hey, great article, let’s chat about this.” It is really nice to be in constant contact with new people and old contacts. So I started thinking it would be great to take something like an e-newsletter to the next level. I wanted to create an information portal that also functions as a networking portal for people to feed off of each others’ ideas and learn about who does what, while getting in contact with each other.
I tried to think of a way to really make it more of a niche community. There’s nothing out there for women, and there is an increasing number of women in our industry. So in December of last year, I wrote the business plan and had the website built. I sent out tons of e-mails to all my girlfriends in the industry asking a million questions, “What would you like to read? What would you like to see? What would you hate to see? What are your thoughts on this? Give me some feedback on what sort of tips and trends and articles and all sorts of things you’d want to see on this site?” After about two months of getting and compiling information, I launched the first Ad Femme Newsletter and the website in February.
|
|
Adrian: We already have Digital Moses and other online newsletters, how is Ad Femme different?
|
|
Lindsay: On Ad Femme the tips, articles and news are written for women by women. There’s the Ad Femme of the Month article/newsletter, which features a distinguished woman in our industry via an interview like this. I don’t believe any other company specifically promotes women in online advertising this way. It’s kind of an empowering, motivational and informational tidbit all wrapped up into one. Secondly, there is an interactive forum with multiple topics: fashion, pet peeves, work-at-home moms and once a month we have a Dear Tina column, where seasoned marketing professional and business owner Tina MacNicholl gives advice to women who have questions like: “Hey Tina, My boss flirts with me and I’m not sure what I should do about it. Help!” So that’s another exclusive thing to Ad Femme. In addition to the interactive forum and polls we also feature Tips & Trends, Hot Topics & News, Classifieds, Resources and Upcoming Events. Most of the news articles written are focused on what women want to hear and read about, as well as what tips we have for leading a happy, healthy and financially profitable day.
|
|
Adrian: Okay. What else do you want to tell us about?
|
|
Lindsay: Well, there is an Ad Femme event planned for New York Ad Tech, probably November 7th. It’s going to be a special event for Ad Femme members and readers. Over the next month Ad Femme will start offering special memberships to readers which will include free passes to this and other events.
Ad Femme is getting involved with special events and companies all over the country. Most of the events are promoted by Ad Femme, and Ad Femme readers get special discounts on attending these events. A woman I met through Guardian Life Insurance just hosted a FREE “financial planning for women” event in NYC. Another woman I know provides valuable advice to women on Strategic Attraction – she’s offered a significant discount to Ad Femme readers for her next 4 week tele-seminar.
I’ve found the best way to build meaningful relationships is to network with likeminded people face-to-face at fun and informational events. Can you tell I used to be an event planner?
|
|
Adrian: Great. Why don’t we talk a little bit about Primary Ads?
|
|
Lindsay: Ken Harlan hired me last year to do business development. I have a lot of contacts in the affiliate space from buying traffic to lead generation sites and other offers. Initially I was going to be an affiliate manager to bring on new affiliates and new clients, which I still do, but for the most part I focus on the lead gen division I launched for them called Primary Lead Gen. PLG is a three-tiered network. Obviously, there are the sites that we own and operate ourselves, there’s a syndicate page of offers that we serve into other lead gen paths to generate additional revenue for our partners and leads for our clients, and then third is the broker network that we have, where if we need additional lead volume on a campaign we’ll give it to a trusted partner of ours to host and deliver leads through us.
|
|
Adrian: And has it really taken off?
|
|
Lindsay: Yes, and continues to do so. There are lead generation companies out there that have 30 plus employees doing the same thing that two of us are doing. So it’s obviously been limited in the growth based on man power, but it’s amazing how much we’ve been able to grow with just the two of us.
|
|
Adrian: What would happen if the PLG division was not doing so well?
|
|
Lindsay: No matter what company I work for I always give 110 percent, maybe even more, and if numbers ever started to drop I would figure out a way to get them back up.
|
|
Adrian: Anything except hire the booth babes.
|
|
Lindsay: Haha. Yeah.
|
|
Adrian: Well let me ask your opinion on that. Let’s say Ken said, “You know what? We’re really seeing that these female media buyers aren’t coming to the booth, but they buy a lot and we need to get some of their attention. Just the dorky guys at the booth aren’t doing it and so we’re going to hire some Chippendales for our booth.” Would you resist the idea of male models at booths in the same way that you’d resist females?
|
|
Lindsay: First of all Ken would never ask that, and the guys at PA hold their own… but yeah, I would definitely be against it. Just because I think it shines the same light that a booth babe would, which is basically saying, “Hey, we don’t really care what you think about our company, we’re just trying to get you here to check out this hot guy. And while you’re standing here we’re going to try and tell you about our new search product. And hopefully, you’ll remember us for the search product and not for dreamy blue eyes over there.” Although, I would be VERY interested to see the response that “hot booth dudes” would get.
|
|
Adrian: Fair enough. The thing that really stands out for me in this interview is your taking of the women’s side of the business. Where do you see the women’s side of this business evolving?
|
|
Lindsay: Well, I think this industry is very different from a woman’s perspective than it was five years ago when I first started in it. There are more women. There are more women in higher positions. There are wonderful opportunities for smart and passionate women to get into within this industry. If they’re already in it, it’s a great business to stay in, especially when you consider the “mommy” aspect of things. I’m really looking forward to being able to start a family but also be able to work and make a good living. That is a HUGE perk that women can take advantage of when working in online media.
Women in our business are going to continue to evolve and grow, just as you see men doing. The strong survive, and the weak either learn to be strong or get a different job. As the industry continues to grow, it will hopefully evolve to include more and more women and less and less booth babes.
|
|
Adrian: Do you think that the booth babes will be eliminated?
|
|
Lindsay: As more women get into the industry I think you’ll see that there won’t be a need for the booth babes. There are already beautiful women standing at the booths who know all about the advertising and media opportunities that the company has to offer, and they intelligently describe exactly what they do.
|
|
Adrian: Very good. So for the women that would like to, and also men if they choose to, join your newsletter, that’s at www.AdFemme.com?
|
|
Lindsay: Yes it is. There is a sign up button at the bottom of the home page.
|
|
Adrian: And then do you want to, just as we’re closing up, talk about The Co Reg Insider?
|
|
Lindsay: Sure. The CoReg Insider was founded by a group of lead gen professionals, who got together and decided to start a lead generation specific e-newsletter. Because of my experience in that segment of our industry, they asked me to be a staff writer. The CoReg Insider is something to definitely look out for, if you work in the lead generation industry or if you’re looking to learn about it. Eventually, they are going to publish white papers on exactly how a lead generation business should be run, and I’m sure I’ll be giving a lot of input on that.
|
|
Adrian: Is that a site we can sign up for now?
|
|
Lindsay: Yeah, absolutely. You can do that at www.thecoreginsider.com.
|
Digg 
