Akamai visits Adwise booth
When was the last time that a 13 billion dollar firm's business
development manager visited your convention booth? For Adwise, a
small start-up firm in the area of Internet advertising, it happened at the ISPCON, 1999 San Jose convention. It was the first time Adwise participated in a convention and the visit was from Akamai's BD manager.
Akamai's BD
manager, together with Meir Yedidya, Adwise's CEO, in the
firm's ISPCON 1999, San Jose, convention booth. Demonstarting
on the cumputer is
Ari Manor, CEO of ZOOZ consulting.
Adwise has developed a unique solution, allowing internet service providers (ISPs), to send an advetising message to their subscribers. Adwise's solution made it possible to send a floating advertising message, ralated to the content of the Web page the subscriber was just viewing. For example, if the person was ordering a book from amazon.com, he may be offered the same book at a discount price at Barnes & Noble.
Following completion of the technologucal
development stage, Adwise turned to ZOOZ to help with marketing
penetration. Among other things, we wrote, designed and produced the
marketing material (web site, company profile, presentations,
convention booth). We planned the computer demonstration (which proved the relevant ads popped up in random Internet surfing, managed local and international PR (working with international agencies), and even took part in the actual booth demonstration, since Adwise was still to recruit its sales people.
The convention was a
big success for Adwise, and produced an unexpectedly long list of
marketing leads and intersted clients. Adwise's booth and technology were chosen as one of the most innovative in ISPCON and all the important visitors attended it. It was an amazing achievement, considering the fact that it is the biggest convention of its kind, at a time of Internet-hype, with hundreds of displays, some of them by giant firms.
Adwise was sold two years later, after not
being able to take of, at a period of Internet advertising collapse, and today operates in a different format and with a different team. Yet Adwise team members which took part in the convention still remember it as one of the exciting and intoxicating experiences of their lives. For one moment, in one place, we were 'the thing to be'.
