Rich Howe in the Media

Richard K. Howe has been featured in a number of television programs, books and articles over the years. Typically, those features have explored the technology of marketing and the use of data to better associate products to consumers.

In one such program on PBS Frontline, correspondent Douglas Rushkoff was interviewing what he called the "persuaders", companies and individuals who were applying the very latest techniques and technologies within advertising.

In this piece, Rich Howe of Inuvo, Inc. discusses how aligning advertising with the consumer is an exercise in the application of technology. At the time of this braodcast, Richard K Howe was the Chief Marketing Officer of marketing services giant Acxiom Corporation.

The video featuring Rich on Frontline can be viewed online at the Persuaders.

A copy of the entire transcript with comments from Richard Howe can be found at PBS.

Rich Howe was also featured on CBS Sunday Mornings show titled "Made to Measure", a piece about the evolving technology of marketing. That piece can be read at CBS.

Howe has also been featured in a number of books which include the Inside the Minds of the CMO series and Precision Marketing, the new rules for attracting, retaining and leveraging profitable customers. Howe has also been recognized as a leading direct marketer by BtoB magazine.

Rich Howe Non-Profit Activity

Rich Howe has been involved with numerous charitable organizations over the years. He has actively supported the American Lung Association both as a board member in Arkansas and a fund raiser fighting for healthy lungs and healthy air.

Richard has also long been a supporter of America, and American business abroad having run operations in the United States, Canada, Australia, United Kingdom and China. His affiliation with Business for Diplomatic Action provided an outlet to apply his marketing knowledge to the BDA mission to improve the standing and reputation of America around the world.

Richard Howe at FairIsaac

Prior to working at Acxiom (NASDAQ:ACXM) , Richard was the General Manager of the Fair-Isaac (NASDAQ:FIC) Corporations $75 million annual marketing services operations which employed approximately 600 people. When Rich took over the business, the unit had roughly 200 clients and was operating at a loss.

Fair-Isaac is a multi-billion dollar software, services and analytics company best known for its FICO credit scoring products. In 2002 when Richard took over the companies’ services operations, they were highly fragmented across the corporation, the result of both home grown clients and acquired businesses. When Richard left Fair-Isaac in late 2004, the division he ran was generating approximately $110 million in revenue with double digit operating income.

After consolidation in 2002, Richard set about transforming the business which included changes across sales, account management, development, product management and the client delivery functions. Additionally, the business units information technology services on mainframe was outdated and in need of transition to an open system architecture. Richard brought in a new leadership team and over the course of 2 years, that team improved both top and bottom lines while also reducing the overall headcount to 450 people. The business served many well known multi-national corporations (e.g. JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America) direct-to-consumer marketing needs across numerous industries within the United States and Europe. The marketing services addressed both offline and online channels.

The top line growth for the division was achieved both organically and through acquisitions. On the organic side a number of high profile marketing services contracts with companies like the Royal Bank of Canada and Coke we’re added to the portfolio and many under-leveraged accounts like Bristol Meyer currently being managed were expanded. On the acquired side two companies, one consulting and one Interactive Marketing were added to adapt the go-to-market strategy and extend the services capabilities to online marketing. Richard also generated operating improvements through a concerted effort to drive increase utilization within the existing account base.

Also fueling growth over the period was a number of analytical product introductions centered on marketing optimization across the 9 industry segments the division served. Additionally, the division introduced a digital media buying service to compliment the marketing services infrastructure sold to clients. In addition to the above, Richard also worked on Fair Isaacs' $800 million dollar acquisition of HNC Software in 2002. Richard had previously worked at HNC in the late 90’s.

Richard Howe at ieWild, Inc.

In 1999 Rich Howe of Inuvo, Inc. founded ieWild, Inc., a marketing software as a service business in San Diego. The business was created to serve the growing demand for consumer insight from the financial services industry . The technology the company developed and later patented by the acquirer was at the cutting edge of search technology at the time. The company raised multiple rounds of venture capital and partnered with notable fortune 500 companies.

The premise for the business was that consumer behavior, demonstrated in credit card transactions could be used to predict product interests. The technological solution to the problem was elegant and involved the Internet.

Credit card transactions would be analyzed for each consumer. For each merchant name identified in the transaction record, the web site corresponding to that merchant would be spidered using algorithms that would identify the most important words on that site. Those words would then be used to describe the consumer. When all transactions in the record were compiled in this manner, the consumers interests were much better described as a function of the merchants where they actually purchased goods. A search capability was provided to the clients which would allow for simple key word based queries like "show me all individuals who like to fish"

The principle was simple, if a merchant like say Eddie Baurer markets themselves online using words that suggest interest categories like "outdoors" or "hunting" or "fishing" or "casual" then an individual who responds to these marketing messages is in fact suggesting that they have interests in the outdoors, or hunting & fishing or a casual lifestyle. Do this for every purchase transaction and a much better association of product to consumer becomes possible.

Richard K Howe sold the company to HNC Software in 2002. HNC Software was subsequently acquired by Fair Isaac and company. This innovative company was on the cutting edge of search based web technology and well ahead of the curve on the utilization of search technology as a means to augment offline data.

Inuvo SVP of Analytics Craig Dillon was ieWilds Chief Technology Officer. One of the companies patents can be viewed at the patents and trademarks website.

Richard K. Howe at Acxiom

Richard K. Howe is a marketer for the digital age. His experience in one-to-one marketing across banner, website, search, email and direct mail has come directly as a result of execution as Chief Marketing Officer of a multi-billion dollar corporation and as Chief Strategy Officer for the premier provider of marketing services to the fortune 1000.

Richard K Howe joined Acxiom, a $1.3 billion annual interactive marketing services company in 2004 when he assumed global responsibility for the corporations’ product, services, acquisition, distribution, branding and market strategies. Howe was recruited by Acxiom's charismatic leader, Charles Morgan.

In addition to overseeing all marketing, advertising and public relations activities, Rich also assumed operational responsibility for strategic businesses. In addition to his CMO role, he ran both the Asia Pacific and online media targeting divisions. He had over his tenure at Acxiom also run the companies $150M annual Data/Analytic products and Consulting divisions.

Rich helped architect Acxiom’s entry into digital marketing, leading several acquisitions in email, search and display advertising that totaled more than $150 million. Rich also built the company’s first indirect sales channel into the CRM, BI and MDM markets with a multi-million dollar relationships with the EMC Corporation and SAP. Richard Howe was also a driving force in positioning the company for privatization.

Rich joined Acxiom from Fair Isaac & Company, where he served as general manager of the company’s Global Marketing Services unit, turning that unit around by growing revenue from $70 million to $100 million and significantly improving profitability.

Before joining Fair Isaac, he founded and was the CEO of ieWild Inc., a software as a service marketing services company whose solutions were utilized by a number of the largest financial institutions in the U.S. He successfully negotiated that company’s acquisition to HNC Software where he had previously worked in both sales and product management capacities for the fraud, risk and originations products provider.

Rich has been at the forefront of software, services, data, IT and analytics technology designed to drive business intelligence for more than 15 years. He has launched more than a dozen products and been involved in more than eight M&A transactions ranging in size from $2 million to $800 million.

Rich graduated first in his class with a Bachelor’s degree in structural engineering from Concordia University, Canada, and a Master’s degree in engineering from McGill University, Canada. Rich is a patented inventor and currently sits on a number of non-profit boards.

Richard K. Howe at Inuvo

Richard K Howe has previously served in and founded various technology, information and analytics companies. In the years prior to becoming the CEO of Inuvo.com (AMEX: INUV) Richard served as Chief Marketing/Business Strategy and M&A Officer at the Acxiom Corporation (NASDAQ: ACXM), a $1.4 billion annual revenue global interactive marketing services company.

While at Acxiom, he had been responsible for building the company’s Asia Pacific business, consulting business, targeted display advertising business and for managing the information products and analytics business. Richard has been on the forefront of Internet innovation and marketing for over 15 years.

Within online advertising, Richard has lead business initiatives across channels that include eMail, Display, Mobile, Search and Affiliate marketing. While he considers himself an entrepreneur by vocation, his experience canvases businesses both big and small with a passion for technology and creativity that addresses inefficiencies within marketing.

Since joining Inuvo in December of 2008, Rich has transformed the management team and board of directors, established a technology vision, restructured the companies debt financing with Wachovia, sold non strategic businesses, closed non-performing businesses, raised $4.2 million dollars through an oversubscribed round of equity financing, grown revenue as of Q3 2010, by 53% year over year and increased shareholder value 7X.

In 2010, Inuvo has been transformed into one of the fastest growing micro-cap companies in the online media / marketing services sector where they compete with other public companies like; ICLK, MCHX, VCLK, LOOK, DRIV, INSP, KNOT, LOCM. During this transition, Inuvo has also in-sourced approximately 200 jobs to Tampa, Florida. Rich's Blog can be read at the Inuvo.com web site under CEO connection.

Under Rich's leadership, Inuvo is fast becoming a leading innovator of online marketing technology and services designed to provide advertisers with greater efficiency and ROI.