HyperDrive Blasts Off.

Marketing company creates interactive relationships designed for the 21st Century.

When brothers Dan and Rob Heimbrock founded a new interactive marketing company on New Year's Day 2001, it was all part of a grand plan.While most people were home working off a millennium-sized hangover, they were plotting a revolution in marketing strategy and execution. In the nearly three years since its doors opened, HyperDrive Interactive has outpaced others of its kind by shunning the "old school" ways of marketing and embracing new media tools that promise to blaze new marketing paths in the 21st Century.

Nothing about HyperDrive Interactive can be considered mainstream. Entering its fourth year, the firm is approaching the $1 million mark in annual revenue, having tripled first-year sales by combining new age marketing savvy with branding principles time-tested since advertising began. The firm has attracted forward-thinking local clients such as LaRosa's Pizzerias, Cincinnati Children's Hospital, and the International Butterfly Show, as well as national brands including Dreamfields Pasta, Sharpie Minis, and Clopay Garage Doors.

The biggest name in Cincinnati pizzerias, LaRosa's has dominated the local market for decades. Even so, the minds at HyperDrive Interactive were able to tap into 21st century tools to provide additional marketing and sales opportunities for the 50-year-old Cincinnati institution to grow and connect with its most cherished assets, its most loyal customers. A permission-based email marketing campaign created by HyperDrive is paying immediate dividends.

"We wanted to reach out to our on-line ordering customers directly to tell them more about our system and to get them to visit again. The folks at HyperDrive are smart and really 'get it.' They delivered a complete turnkey solution that allows us to better understand and engage our on-line customers," said LaRosa's Executive Vice President Pete Buscani.

Unlike most marketing firms, HyperDrive concentrates on measurable performance methods that deliver results, which in turn provide a greater return on investment for its clients. "In today's complex business environment, the old ways of marketing are too expensive, and way too risky," said Dan Heimbrock, President of the firm and a marketing veteran with nearly 20 years of experience helping a long list of national brands. "We see companies continuing to spend as much as 90 percent of their annual budget on awareness and new customer acquisition instead of focusing on keeping and growing current customers. To us, and to the clients we serve, the new mantra is: 'Customers are more important than prospects.' "

HyperDrive relies on a unique three-point strategy – Acquire, Retain, Grow – that optimizes its clients' marketing investments by creating personalized, one-to-one relationships with its customers, and provides measurement and refinement at every point of contact. Because different customers desire different information, the company's staff of eight crafts "experiences" by providing a virtual smorgasbord of information offered at various layers of detail, based on the specific needs of a brand's customers. This unique segmentation helps engage a client's customers on a one-to-one basis and motivates behavior to purchase again and again.

"The average customer wants to deal with their brand relationships on their own terms," Heimbrock emphasized. "They respond to individual, personalized attention, which is made possible through enabling technologies that allow individual customer analysis and planning. In our marketing model, the goal is to have long-term, happy customers. It's a two-way learning relationship. Give your most valuable customers what they want, and you get a level of loyalty in return that could never be achieved with traditional advertising."

The HyperDrive model couldn't be simpler to understand or administer, so the Heimbrock partners wonder why companies, and their agencies, continue to write 1955 media plans in their search to capture 2004 results. "It's the continuity of your relationship with your customer that matters most, not what ads you did last quarter. We believe smart companies are finally starting to realize that," said Creative Director Rob Heimbrock. "The old 20th Century model was based on how many eyeballs you could reach for a dollar, and who won the most creative awards. Hey guys, wake up! Everything's changed, so why are you still putting up websites that are nothing more than lame, on-line brochures?"

Team HyperDrive refuses to rest on its achievements to date, and continues to aggressively seek new challenges with companies dissatisfied with their current marketing results and ready to step into the 21st Century. "We position ourselves as a team with nearly 60 years of combined marketing experience," said Dan. "But we get it, we realize things are different now. We've changed our perspective, now it's up to companies to do the same."

Go back