The Brand Coupon Network, housed in a nondescript office suite on North Harrell’s Ferry Road, looks every bit the fledgling startup. But Danny Abraham believes his company has the potential to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars.
His central concept of “cause marketing” is a lot like what Campbell’s Soup and General Mills have been doing for years, where kids bring in labels or box tops that their school can redeem for cash. The school gets some extra funds and the companies get a few extra sales and, hopefully, make a psychological connection with people who care about the school.
“What we’ve done is take the good things of those two programs and incorporate them into an online program where everybody wins,” Abraham says.
More For Schools, which he plans to launch nationwide later this year, works like this: Supporters of a particular school go to moreforschools.com to select and print out coupons from participating brands. The brands pay a fee when one of their coupons is redeemed, and that revenue is shared with the selected schools. The supporters save money with the coupons and the brands build a connection with the supporters as part of an emotion-based marketing strategy. The schools get some extra cash, say 25 cents per coupon, without having to manage the program themselves. And BCN makes money while building a valuable consumer database and driving traffic to its Web site.
That’s the theory, and Abraham says 18 local investors are on board. He’s also working to establish relationships with major nonprofits like Dallas-based Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation. Abraham seems confident the next Internet success story could start here.
“YouTube, which gives away information, was worth $1.6 billion to Google,” he says. “What could a program be worth that gives away money?”
POSITION: President/Founder
COMPANY: Brand Coupon Network
WHAT THEY DO: “Coupon cause marketing”
REVENUE: $250,000-plus
NEXT GOAL: Launching “Coupons for the Cure” with the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation
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