How Do "NEW" Internet Millionaires Waste Investment Dollars?
6 July 2000
You take other peoples' hard earned money that they, in good faith, invested in your company, and make stupid advertising decisions!Yes, the above is my personal editorial comment. The story below was sent to us this morning. It relates how a publicly traded 'dot com' company has chosen to use at least part of a recent round of newly acquired funding to promote itself. The company is a referral network service for physicians that specialize in performing elective, cosmetic procedures. While I have no problem with either NASCAR or TNN as valuable advertising media/venues, after being in the ad biz for 25 years, I seriously question the validity of the advertising campaign suggested in the story. To me, it smacks of just another dopey decision made by Internet executives who can't spend their money fast enough, and then can't figure out why the company fails. Read and decide for yourself. Heck, you may even want to buy some stock! Marc J. Rauch Exec. Vice President/Co-Founder THE AUTO CHANNEL STROUDSBURG, Pa. - thatlook.com (OTC Bulletin Board: THAT) and New Hampshire International Speedway announced a marketing partnership today that will include sponsorship of the track's NASCAR racing events for the upcoming July 7 - 9, 2000 weekend. Included in the title sponsorship are the featured "thatlook.com 300 Winston Cup" race on Sunday, July 9th that will be broadcast live on TNN, and the "thatlook.com 200 Craftsman Truck" race on Saturday, July 8th that will be broadcast live on CBS. The media broadcasting these events estimate that a combined total of 10 million people will watch these broadcasts over the weekend. Gerard Powell, President and CEO of thatlook.com commented: "This is the first major event to come of our recently completed media venture capital funding, and represents just the beginning of our efforts to launch our activities to a new and much higher level. We are particularly pleased to be associated with such a highly visible and well-respected organization as NASCAR for this series. The expected demographics of the TNN and CBS viewers for these races are very much in line with the audiences we seek to reach on behalf of our physician network. As a result, I expect to see substantial benefits from this sponsorship in the coming months. "As we set our company onto a rapid growth track, I anticipate that this type of high visibility advertising will play a strong and complimentary role to our typical, product-specific and highly targeted advertising. In each case, all of our activities will remain focused on our mission of serving our network of doctors." About thatlook.com: thatlook.com is a direct response, marketing services company serving a network of physicians that specialize in performing elective, cosmetic procedures. Using a combined, multi-media approach, including the Internet, television, radio, print and direct mail, thatlook.com generates financially qualified, and purchase-minded patient traffic to its network of member physicians. thatlook.com's (OTC Bulletin Board: THAT) Internet web site is: http://www.thatlook.com Investor relations information is at http://www.4-you.com/clients/thatlook/index.html