GPWA Times Magazine - Issue 3 - January 2008

GPWA TIMES | Scaling new heights By Gary Trask From the outside, it’s an office that looks quite ordinary. There are multiple rows of five-foot panels that form a horde of tiny cu- bicles, each equipped with a desk, computer and telephone. There’s a cafeteria with complimentary cof- fee and soda and there appears to be plenty of casual “water cooler talk” going on among the employees. But take two steps inside the glass doors that guard the first-floor en- try of this Boston-area building and your impression that this is a typi- cal office quickly fades to black. Into focus come the small international flags that are raised from each cu- bicle. You’ll hear various discussions going on – each in a different lan- guage – and the look and attire of the employees roaming the floor are as diverse as something you’d see at a United Nations summit. Welcome to the home of Everest Af- filiates, the company that is blowing the doors off the strategy of localiza- tion marketing. “It’s always a strange feeling to come into the office in the morning and to hear all the different conversations,” says Bob Land, the company’s Di- rector of Affiliate Marketing, of his Boston office, which is used primar- ily for the company’s software devel- opment. “I get by the first row and everyone is talking in French. Then as I walk by the second row, all I can hear is Swedish and that’s followed by someone speaking in German as I get to the third row. “By the time I get to my office [at the other end of the building], I feel like I’ve already traveled the world before I even sit down at my desk.” Everest began its venture into online gaming in 1997, and since then – as its Web site boasts – it has grown to han- dle more than $500 million in secure gaming transactions per year while delivering “more than one million games to players from over 200 countries.” As the company matured, it took on the “blue ocean strategy” of making the competition irrelevant. Instead of jumping into the hotly contested markets of the U.S. and U.K., Ever- est set up shop in some areas of the world where online gaming wasn’t a hot market – yet. “We describe it as staying out from under the elephants’ feet,” Land says with a laugh. “We just kind of said, ‘Well, we don’t want to play over there where all those big elephants are playing. Let’s go over there in that open prairie and do our thing.’ It was almost a case of simple basic survival.” Ironically, the picture that Land de- scribed of walking through the office and seeing and hearing dozens of dif- ferent cultures is exactly the picture that Everest would rather its clientele not see. Because the reason this market- specific strategy has flourished is that in countries such as France, one of its biggest markets, Everest doesn’t have the look or feel of a poker room that is based 3,000 miles away. The same goes for Italy, Germany, Poland or any of the 22 markets that are prominently featured on the home pages of Everest Poker and Everest Casino. “If we’re doing our job correctly, we are considered the ‘local’ poker room Scaling new heights A target-specific marketing strategy has translated into success for Everest Affiliates Bob Land - Director of Affiliate Marketing