Halogen

Now if we could only target our ads to these ten streets, then we could really raise our CPM’s.

Early signs are very positive – I think there is an opportunity to build a significant distributed media company focused on the luxury market. So having raised a lot of capital, we are starting to build out our team to attract and service new clients. Immediate open jobs detailed below – but we will need additional people in account services, creative development and ad operations over the next 90 days as well. We are building the teams in both NYC and SF.

We are not like most web media start-ups –we don’t have a large audience with little revenue. In fact, we have less than 200K monthly uniques – but with real revenue growing 100% per year. And we focus on a rich corner of the market that is less impacted by the current recession – the luxury consumer. We see plenty of opportunities to grow even faster – in terms of editorial breadth, audience and revenue.

How? Expand Halogen Guides into more categories in the luxury travel and lifestyle market – and grow the size of that audience.  And, at the same time, we need to build our new initiative, Halogen Publishers, into the premier extended reach network for luxury advertisers. We currently have 25 publishers and about 5 million monthly uniques.

So, if you know of anyone that might be qualified for any of the jobs below, send them my way. I will pay a healthy referral reward!

Vice-President and General Manager, Halogen Publishers
This experienced executive will lead the development of a luxury ad network, building the team, revenue momentum and operational capability to hit $3M+ in ’09 revenue. We need a GM that can build the sales and account services team in NYC, and build the ad operations and technology teams in San Francisco. Candidate should be able to blend sales and business development skills with proven hands-on operations experience.

Vice-President, Marketing, Halogen Guides

Experienced executive in both online direct response marketing and audience development. Proven management of, and success with, SEO/SEM, lead generation marketing, email acquisition programs and overall audience growth. Will need to be hands-on doer, with the ability to grow and manage a small, high-performance marketing team.

Sales Executive (NYC and San Francisco)
We’re looking for a high-energy sales executive with at least 3 years of online advertising sales experience. The perfect candidate has existing relationships with media buyers and advertising clients. Required skills include fluency with media-buying terminology (eg, CPM v. CPA, reach v. frequency, GIF v. Flash) and proficiency with Excel and Powerpoint. Must be a clear and concise communicator. The position will report to Halogen’s VP of Sales.

For the last year, I have been reading and enjoying Doug Gollan’s email newsletter about his business – the magazine, Elite Traveler – and the impact (or lack of it) of the recession on his readers. Elite Traveler is the giant glossy magazine (a whole tree?) that he leaves on the seats of private jets – and Doug has been trying to remind luxury marketers that his readers are not yet feeling the pinch. While I would like to believe that the demographic we are targeting is more immune to the financial meltdown outside, I am not so sure. It’s probably a matter of timing and degree. We are hearing that private jet charter volumes are down at least 20% from last year.

What is clearer now, as we move through the third quarter, is that the recession has moved up from subprime borrowers to those with luxury aspirations and lifestyles. Brands that looked immune last year now seem more fragile – affordable luxury companies like Whole Foods or Starbucks are becoming less affordable.

I think that even the very affluent will start to adjust their attitudes and spending – and so will marketers in response. Frugality will be cool. Those spending will keep looking for more unique experiences, not more stuff. A greater sensitivity to disparities will temper the display of spending. Economists and consumers are no longer in denial about the recession and its impact. Luxury marketers need to take note.

Over at Halogen Guides, we have become self-proclaimed experts on the destination club industry, helping consumers figure out these six-figure luxury vacation home programs. We have watched the industry get traction, stub its toes, and consolidate. After Steve Case invested in Exclusive Resorts, we tracked that club’s growth to about 3500 members (who pay on average about $200,000 to join) and its current #1 position. And now there is a group of industry leaders that have pulled away from the pack, including the #2 Ultimate Escapes, and the smaller but well-regarded club, Quintess. Other clubs are also worth watching; Lusso Collection has passed 100 members, and High Country Club delivers a value-oriented solution and has passed 300 members.

It is not an easy business. Along the way, one club went belly-up, and two years ago Leading Hotels of the World entered the category partnered with a real estate developer, and had to be rescued by Quintess.

We are entering a new phase of this category, defined by its transition from a luxury second home solution (‘high-end timeshare’) to a luxury travel solution  – primarily for affluent families. One sign of this transition is a new entrant – Abercrombie & Kent Residence Club,  a new business from the team that has sold tens of thousands of luxury tours. A&K bought two smaller clubs earlier this year, and have added capital and marketing muscle to their own destination club model.

Another sign of this transition – and a preview of the coming battle with 5 star hospitality brands – is the way that the industry leaders have begun to evolve their product. Now it’s not just about getting access to large vacation homes in the right locations – members can also use their allocated days to take ultra-luxury tours, or to stay at high-end hotels that have aligned with these clubs.

This evolution makes sense. Today’s affluent consumers are younger, more active, time-starved and expect solutions – not just products, homes or hotel rooms. Exclusive Resorts and the other leaders in this industry have realized this, and are trying to provide a complete luxury travel package to its members. Now think of a destination club like a membership to a high-end travel club, and the annual dues (as much as $30,000 per year) as an advance payment on the number of days that the member will use (either staying in a home, taking a tour or booking a hotel room). And members, having joined, will always try to use these allocated days first for all their travel – since they are already paid for.

And this is why the 5 star hotel brands will need to address this competitive threat over the coming years. A member of a destination club, by joining, has probably by default allocated 75% or more of their annual discretionary travel budget to that club. That will leave less hotel spend for brands like the Four Seasons to fight over. No need for them to worry yet – there are only about 6,000 destination club members in the world, but I think that number could reach 50,000 in 5-10 more years.

I always debate the wisdom of publishing the names of the publishers that have joined our network – it usually means that a bunch of biz dev people from our competitors start calling them. But the foundation of Halogen Publishers is the sites that have agreed to let us represent them – so for now, we will talk about them. Besides, as a transparent network, advertisers and their agencies should always know where their ads are running on Halogen Publishers.

One of our recent additions is Perfect Escapes, a Bay Area-based online luxury hotel booking service, featuring only 5 star hotels and resorts. Their momentum over the past year has been impressive:

Over 500,000 consumers visit the site each month and more than 350,000 consumers currently subscribe to receive The Perfect 10 email newsletter.  The audience on the site is global with North American skew (70% of total).  The readership of The Perfect 10 is more heavily North America based (87% of total).

The site attracts an affluent (average HHI>$200K), female (61%), youngish boomer (average age 43) that travels frequently (average 5.5 trips per year) and is comfortable researching and purchasing online (over 90% regularly make purchases online). Over 70% have a current passport and more than half travel internationally on an annual basis.

The most booked hotel groups on the site are Fairmont, Ritz-Carlton, Four Seasons, Loews, Westin and Kimpton. The average booking is $815 with a high average daily rate of $325. One third of travel bookings are for destinations outside of the U.S.

We have started to run campaigns on this site, and results so far have been excellent. The audience is clearly affluent and engaged in using the web to manage their travel.  Based on our discussions with Eric Jeck, the CEO, we expect the site to continue to grow in terms of audience, and that more hotels, and original editorial, such as destination guides, will be added in the coming months.

Over the past year we have been building a team of advisors – the extended family – who have offered to help me when needed. A phone call or introduction, advice on marketing or product strategy or an introduction to a great job candidate. I am honored that they have agreed to help. Here is our Advisory Board so far:

Ken Austin has been Executive Vice President and CMO of Marquis Jet Partners since its inception. At Marquis Jet, Mr. Austin oversees business development, marketing, sales support and sales consultants and is a member of the company Board.

Pat Connolly is Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer  of Williams-Sonoma Inc., and oversees all marketing aspects for the company. He currently serves on the management board of the Stanford Business School and CafePress.

Gordon Crovitz is former publisher of The Wall Street Journal and president of the Consumer Media Group of Dow Jones, where he oversaw the growth of The Wall Street Journal Online to the largest subscription news site on the Web, acquired MarketWatch.com and launched the news database service Factiva.

Scott Galloway is founder and principal of Firebrand Partners, an activist investment firm that acquires strategic positions in publicly traded consumer companies. Scott is also a Clinical Associate Professor at The Stern School of Business (NYU) where he teaches brand strategy to 2nd year MBA students. He is also on the board of the New York Times Company.

Michael Hudes is currently President, Innovation Strategy and Growth for Interpublic Media Brands where he is responsible for directing emerging media strategy and corporate development activities for all of Interpublic’s global media assets including the IPG Media Lab.

Michela O’Connor Abrams is the President and Publisher of Dwell, the award-winning design and lifestyle media company. She has over 20 years of experience in publishing, trade show management, online branding strategies and strategic business development.

Bill Youstra has served as a consultant and advisor to several Silicon Valley companies in the areas of consumer media, e-commerce, mobile and virtual world applications. Bill previously worked as a VP of Product & Content at AOL.

Recessions are tough on everyone. Really tough on print media.

I have just become a fan of a new news feed service, called socialmedian, and have used it to create an always-updated news service about online luxury marketing. So rather than subscribe to several blog RSS feeds, or track stories about the luxury marketing industry across lots of different sites, you can use this new service.

It will take a couple minutes to register, and then feel free to help improve it – add new sources for stories, or invite others to join it. And if you see stories that are not relevant, give them the thumbs down and the service will get better at suggesting stories for us all.

One of our publishers, social networking site Spire.com, got a decent shout-out from Robert Frank on his Wealth Blog over at WSJ.com. Spire.com has moved gracefully from closed alpha to public beta and is now building audience and probably learning what its members are interested in – and willing to write about. Like other social networking sites (TeeBeeDee.com, the social network for boomers comes to mind), Spire has launched with a very broad range of topics, but most of the action so far has been in travel – restaurants, hotels and destinations.

Makes sense to me, particularly based on the inroads that Facebook and LinkedIn have made into the affluent, 35+ crowds, either for business or personal networking. Their success will make it difficult for a ‘general-purpose’ new social network to succeed, at least in the U.S. – but there is still plenty of opportunity in serving the affluent consumer in terms of their information needs – and to do that using the power of the community.

When it comes to travel in particular, I want advice from people that I can see are like me – that travel with the same budget, objectives, style and brand preferences. I will also appreciate any site that cuts through clutter and reduces my time to get to a better decision. This is what Spire.com can do as it grows – and provide the antidote to sites like tripadvisor.com for the luxury traveler. I would rather read ten discerning reviews about a resort, than over 100 that are all over the map, in terms of insight.

We are rooting for Spire.com to grow for obvious reasons – we think our advertisers will value the site, particularly if they are able to keep the audience quality as high as it currently is. But we also see a real consumer need for better travel intelligence. More on this when we review sites like the American Express site Members Know and take a fresh look at progress over at ASmallWorld.