Industry snapshot: Imagitas

As practioners of intangible capital management, we were very interested in a recent presentation by the Chairman and Founder of Imagitas, Brett Matthews, and his wife, Ginger Salazar. They were young marketers coming out of P&G when they founded Imagitas (originally called Targeted Marketing Solutions, Inc.) in 1992. They were looking for an under-served market.

Their initial target audience was people in the process of moving. A move is an occasion for a number of choices and expenditures. But, at that time, companies that offered telephones, home improvement supplies, truck rentals, or furnishings couldn’t connect with these people until several months later, when they appeared in typical marketing databases. By then, many of their moving dollars had already been spent.

So, these two hit on the idea of working with the U.S. Postal Service. Imagitas would print the change-of-address kits and provide coupons for discounts from companies targeting these movers. It was free to the post office and didn’t violate any kind of confidentiality. Imagitas would get paid according to the use patterns of the coupons. After twelve refusals from the post office, they finally won the business, and the rest is history.

We asked Brett what he viewed as the critical intangible capital of the company and how they would use it going forward. He pointed to their people (human capital), their ability to manage complex relationships (structural capital), and the strength of their ties with key partners (relationship capital). Using this intangible capital, they have begun to roll out new programs with the motor vehicle registries in numerous states.

A few months ago, Pitney Bowes bought Imagitas for $230 million in stock. They were buying a real company with real earnings. But what they were really buying was this intangible capital and its potential for the future. Brett says that, “among government agencies, from fishing licenses to social security cards, there are over two billion transactions a year that go on that all have to do with some additional spending.” Imagitas stands a pretty good chance of getting a piece of the action. Do you know how to leverage your own intangible capital? 2005