Though the 1960s might seem glamorous with its scotch and storyboards, advertising in the "Mad Men" era was built on a lot of assumptions.
Social Fulcrum founder Andrew Krebs-Smith wants to take advertising out of the "Mad Men" age and into the era where data is king.
“Making data-driven decisions is totally against traditional agencies, which are more into using creativity,” Krebs-Smith said.
But Social Fulcrum’s tactics are well-suited for startups, he said, which need to move fast and scale quickly.
“Startups don’t actually enjoy working with advertising agencies, but then when they talk to us, they say, ‘That’s what we’re looking for,’” Krebs-Smith (pictured right) said. “We’re faster, grittier.”
And so far, his model has proved successful. Founded in 2010, Social Fulcrum has been profitable since day one.
The company utilizes marketing scientists to help clients acquire new customers by building scalable, data-driven marketing machines for startup clients like Waylens, Menguin, Payoff, Ecovent and Fetch.
“We think it makes much more sense to set up a system where you can garner accurate data extremely quickly, allowing you to run tests that use actual customer behavior to inform marketing decisions in a more iterative fashion,” Krebs-Smith said.
Krebs-Smith has always had an entrepreneurial edge. He co-founded his first startup, Slacker Hero, while attending Baltimore’s Loyola University. Though nothing ever came of the venture, the experience gave him the startup bug and he founded two more companies before launching Social Fulcrum.
While the startup’s first office was headquartered in New York City, Krebs-Smith moved the company to Boston so he could run Social Fulcrum while attending Babson School of Business.
Now, the company operates out of WeWork Fort Point, where the team has grown from four to 22.
And they’re just getting started.
Krebs-Smith said Social Fulcrum is always hiring and has some “pretty audacious goals” for 2017 — most of which he couldn't share. However, he did mention implementing a reporting tool that will help project managers spend more time optimizing performance and less time prepping for client calls.
“There’s tension in how product managers spend their time, so we’re building a reporting tool that automates calling out key trends in performance data,” Krebs-Smith said. “It uses artificial intelligence to call out data and build initial slides for a deck, which makes it way easier for product managers to just say, ‘yes’ or ‘no’ to the data they’ve been dealing with.”
In addition to helping his clients raise the bar, the CEO has high expectations for his team as well.
“The team is crushing client support constantly because this is live or die for these clients — we’re a massive part of their success or failure, so if we’re not busting our asses constantly, we should fire ourselves,” Krebs-Smith said.
Photos via company
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