"The first rule of advertising is: There is no brilliance, only hunches. The second rule is: There are occasional brilliant hunches."
This statement appears on the first page of a brochure presented to potential clients by The Hurst Group, 1440 Foothill Drive, an advertising and market communications company that uses plenty of technology in its work.It's appropriate The Hurst Group uses those high-tech devices because 90 percent of the company's $7 million in gross annual billings comes from clients with products related to personal computing, said Mark Hurst, founder and part-owner.
Coleman F. Barney, president, said marketing strategies should include the use of digitized data, which makes it possible to get a ton of information. "Digital data is a dream come true if it can be made manageable," he said.
Barney, who is responsible for getting advertising by The Hurst Group on the Internet, said the advertising is done internally and includes brochures and demonstrations that can be downloaded if people want to buy it. The advertising also contains information about the agency's creative work, the staff, Hurst's strategy plus information about Utah's great skiing.
Using information from the Utah Travel Council, The Hurst Group promotes skiing as a way of attracting people to Utah. He said the information could be used by airlines when they sell tickets via personal computers from home.
The Hurst Group helped launch one of Novell's recent software innovations by providing the marketing materials. A 25-page brochure on Novell's Inter-ware was produced digitally, and the company also is producing a 24-page trade publication for Novell that will be put on the Internet.
Some of the other companies The Hurst Group has worked for include Golden Triangle, San Diego; Dayna Communications, Salt Lake City; Nisus Software, San Diego; Daw Technologies; Salt Lake City; DataViz, Trumbull, Conn.; Envisio; Minneapolis, Minn.; and Megahertz, Salt Lake City.
Barney said advertisements on the Internet are not obtrusive like television advertisements because people on the Internet choose to view them.
Hurst said research is an important part of his company's work. Once the information is gathered and analyzed, The Hurst Group comes up with a strategy "that effectively brands your company, positions your products and distills the key selling message into a simple and compelling form."
Both men believe that because people are bombarded with thousands of messages everyday, an advertising campaign must stand out so that when consumers become aware of a product they'll want to buy it.
A native of Burley, Idaho, Hurst received a bachelor's degree in organizational communications in 1974 and went to work for Sen. Jake Garn as a press secretary. He worked on Garn's campaign and then in his Washington, D.C., office for one year.
He returned to Salt Lake City in 1976 and worked for an advertising agency. He opened his own agency in 1979 with an emphasis on political campaigns and public policy advertising and also did some school and drug abuse campaigns for state agencies.
"I reached a point in politics where I had done everything," said Hurst. "I started to take the agency into consumer areas, local retail outlets, car dealers, furniture stores, restaurants and entertainment," he said.
In 1987, Dayna Communications was looking for an advertising agency, and The Hurst Group was invited to make a presentation, although Hurst admits he didn't know much about the company. Dayna officials liked The Hurst Group's creative approach to advertising, and Hurst got the account.
Hurst said he saw the potential that technology could play in advertising after contact with Dayna, a producer of MacIntosh peripherals. Today, every desk at The Hurst Group features a MacIntosh computer.
A native of Salt Lake City, Barney grew up in Hawaii because his father worked at Brigham Young University-Hawaii. When the family moved to Orem, his father became a professor of communications at BYU. Barney graduated in 1984 with a bachelor's degree in communications, advertising and business.
He met Hurst while he was doing political campaigns and they worked together. When the campaigns were over, Barney went to work for a Salt Lake advertising agency specializing in high-tech companies.
He used that experience with high-tech firms to get a job with Microsoft in Redmond, Wash., as corporate communications manager for the Microsoft Office for Windows product. He was recruited by Novell and became director of marketing communications in 1992.
A year ago, Hurst split up with a partner and started talking to Barney about joining him at The Hurst Group. Barney joined the firm June 1, 1994, as president and part-owner with responsibilities of forming business strategies for clients and working on internal business issues-all with the help of computers.