SELF EMPLOYMENT SAVVY: Katherine Arno

Building a Buzz

Copyright © 2005 Blethen Maine Newspapers Inc.

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Katherine Arno photos Game inventor Barbara Jerome, left, Maine SBDC business counselor Tom Leach and Dr. Richard Dillihunt, Jerome's father, talk about marketing the Namit game, pictured below.

Prompted by the natural impatience of her seven children during long waits in the doctor's office, airport and other settings, Barbara Jerome, of Falmouth, invented a word game that proved popular with her family and friends. They not only had fun playing it but they also honed their literacy skills in the process.

Working with her retired father, Dr. Richard Dillihunt, Jerome took the game, called Namits, to the marketplace. Today, these entrepreneurs have sold over 20,000 games, developed four different Namits products, and just licensed Namits to an international game distributor to produce and wholesale it. Namits is already showing up in some of the best know children's catalogs like Hearth Song, where it sold out over the holidays, and other catalogs designed for educators and schools.

"I knew that I had a really good handle on what makes a good toy," said Jerome. "I felt so much confidence in that piece that I knew if we could fill in all the other pieces, we could do it."

One key piece to successfully introducing a new product or service to the marketplace is creating product image, or brand identity, in order to position it in the marketplace. According to Maine Small Business Development Centers (Maine SBDC) certified business counselor Tom Leach who assisted Jerome along the way, Jerome has done "an incredibly good job" with this important piece, often called building the buzz.

"A formal advertising campaign always attempts to build buzz," said Leach. "But advertising in a traditional sense is expensive and the media is so fragmented today, that it is even more challenging for a little company to make the right promotional choices."

Leach, who counsels from the Maine SBDC center at USM when he is not teaching marketing at UNE, points out that Jerome decided to get attention for Namits a different way - word of mouth or WOM.

"Barbara researched different toy and educational magazines that have an interest in children's toys," said Leach. "She submitted Namits for evaluation by the magazines which gave it high marks and often featured it in their toy review sections."

"Word of mouth is the best," says Leach. "If someone you are speaking to makes a comment, it's not empty advertising, it is the truth; it is real."

While not traditional advertising, the Namits WOM approach was an orchestrated plan.

"It's essential to know your market because the more you know about your customer the better able you are to appeal to their needs, to talk their talk," says Leach. "Parents who are interested in literacy and want an interactive, portable toy that is good with fidgety kids like Namits have found Namits to be intellectually engaging and fun."

Because they reached her market. "The stories that Barbara got into magazines gave her tens of thousands of dollars of advertising value," says Leach.

Jerome also identified several prestigious toy awards and submitted Namits for evaluation. Namits immediately received a Top Ten Toys 2004 award from Dr. Toy, a service that evaluates toys as a free public service from the not-for-profit Institute for Childhood Resources. Jerome issued a press release about the award that, she says, got widely used. Awards followed, including a Parent's Choice 2004, Dr. Toy's Best Vacation Children's Product 2005, and Creative Child Magazine Top Toy 2005 awards, and with each honor, Jerome issued another press release.

"Barbara, in essence, created her own news," said Leach. "She worked hard to receive a series of awards which gave on-going news for press releases to targeted media."

Jerome says that an essential WOM tool is her dog eared book called The Secrets of Word of Mouth Marketing by George Silverman (ISBN 0-8144-7072-6). Jerome says she has used it to generate "thousands of dollars of press for free," including national magazines with 1-2 million subscribers. "It's really impressive when you send out a press release with three or four award logos on it," she says.

Dr. Dillihunt has also created his own buzz at a variety of toy and trade shows where he drew considerable attention wearing an old sports coat, adorned with dozens of the brightly colored Namits game cards. Namits also got good reviews from evaluators at those shows, and these "votes of confidence" combined with Namits' awards, drew the attention of the international game distributor that has now licensed Namits.

In drawing the attention of the distributor, Dr. Dillihunt says. "We've tapped into a big pipeline; we are a little stream that has gone into a big river." According to Dr. Dillihunt, as many as 300,000 units could be sold over the next five years. Steering that little stream to the big river: Buzz!

Katherine Arno is the Director of Training and Communications for the Maine Small Business Development Centers (www.mainesbdc.org) in its Portland center at the University of Southern Maine. Kate owned her own small business in Maine for eight years. Today, aside from working with small business issues at Maine SBDC, she helps her husband with the small business that he has owned in Freeport for 12 years. She can be reached at Karno@maine.edu.