Russ: This is The BusinessMakers Show, heard on the radio and seen online at TheBusinessMakers.com. It's guest time on the show and I have a former guest, uh, with me, once again. Telling a new story (be)cause with me now, I have Steve Latham, Founder and CEO of Encore Media Metrics; Steve, welcome back to The BusinessMakers Show.

Steve: Thanks Russ, always a pleasure.

Russ: You bet. Those of you who know Steve know that, uh, previously when he was here, he was in, uh, introduced as the Founder and CEO of Spur Digital and Spur Interactive, which were really (00:46-Steve: same company, yeah, two brands, yep ) one company; same company, different - different branding, all right. And also the Founder and President of HIMA, the Houston Interactive Marketing Association, for quite some time, like (00:57-Steve: yeah long time, yeah a long time, maybe(?) too long), six years now? O.k., all right. Well, uh, what I really want to do is get into the new company, Encore Media Metrics, which is going to be a New York based company, right?

Steve: For the most part, yeah.

Russ: O.k. But - but before, let's back track a little bit and, uh, tell us a little bit about HIMA now, right up front here.

Steve: Sure, um, thanks. Uh, the Houston Interactive Marketing Association is the, you know, really Houston's, kind of, champion for promoting education and connectivity here in the interactive community.

Russ: Right

Steve: So it's really about helping marketers connect and - and learn and become better at, uh, using digital media to build their brands and grow their businesses. So we do it through educational programs, social networking events, and such. Um, our big annual interactive strategies event is coming up on September 15th.

Russ: O.k.

Steve: Hotel Zsa Zsa, um, it'll be great. You know, we have some great key notes including, uh, Julie Ream(?), who's, you know, one of my board members and former, uh, Head of Marketing and Advertising at Walmart and Chrysler (01:56-Russ: wow) and just, you know, wonder kin. She's been amazing; so she's going to be, uh, one of our key notes in the afternoon. And, um, great programming, great - a lot of great networking.

Russ: Well it - well it's an impressive association. I mean, I - I go to, uh, sessions intermittently and membership is now, how big?

Steve: Oh, it's like a million (Russ laughs). No, it's, uh, I don't even know; it's in the hundreds (trails off)

Russ: Well every time I'm there it seems like there's three or four hundred people in the audience and it - and it's an impressive, intelligent audience. I particularly tell people my age, uh, baby boomers (02:30-Steve: yeah), that you need to go there because, uh, the youth, uh, the social media, uh, promotions and education is all very impressive. And, uh, I guess it's going to be hard for you to continue to lead the association (02:43-Steve: yes) when you're up in the Big Apple, right?

Steve: Yes, definitely

Russ: So, we're going to see sort of a leadership change here coming shortly?

Steve: New leadership; new blood, new horses, yeah, yeah, so, it'll be great.

Russ: All right, cool, cool, all right. O.k. so, back track, I think it was probably about two years ago you - you were on. At the time (02:58-Steve: yeah) Spur Digital was the company. It was a - it was a leading interactive marketing company. In fact, uh, for people that don't know about it, describe the Spur Digital Company.

Steve: So, um, originally started just with the idea of helping advertisers or - or brands, like whether it a bank or anybody [that can] use the web effectively to drive sales (03:16-Russ: right). And it was through, uh, it was very technology based originally. So, um, that was the name, Digital (03:23-Russ: right). It was kind of more about digital interactions, strategy. And then, um, what we found was, kind of, we started saying hey, we needed help figuring out Google. How do we use it to get people to our site; what do we do about email? [Be]cause we've got this list, we don't really know how to email people or if we should. Um, what do we do about, you know, advertising (03:40-Russ: right)? What do we do about social?

So, over time we basically came up [with] what's called an agency, which is we, you know, became responsible for - for strategy and developing the plans. Like, how are you going to use the web or email or social or advertising or search to - to reach [and] engage you customers? How are you going to optimize your site? Can you prove your conversion rates [I'm not sure this is what he said-VERY jumbled]?

So, we basically became - we really are responsible for kind of all aspects of planning and execution, whether it's just about the marketing side of it, the CRM side of it, as well as then the, uh, the advertising and the media side of it. So, over time it became really - our focus became more and more about, you know, strategic media planning, buying, campaign management, and really helping them use all channels; display advertisings, search, social, email, etcetera, to, you know, get people to their site using that as, uh, as part of the engagement funnel (04:28-Russ: right), even though very few of our customers actually sold online, but most of them realize that their customers were going online to their site, especially if it was to consider a purchase or anything B to B (04:27-Russ: right). So, as the web became more and more important and [a] more critical part in most company's marketing strategies, uh, we - our role became really more strategic consulting and - and execution. So without a lot of traditional media planning, buying as - in terms of buying media on behalf of our clients, serving up all those ads (04:55-Russ: right) and then the measurement - the reporting, which we'll kind of get into, how the - what that really - you know, that - that's an area we always specialized in and we're, I've found that we're actually, you know, world class in it. Especially compared to what a lot of other shops are doing around the country, and that's ultimately what led to, uh, you know, spinning out the technology; creating a new company, Encore and divesting...

Russ: O.k. So - so, you know, you kind of hinted at it and I already know that Encore Media Metrics is this - is this company totally focused on analyzing metrics and performance. And so, along the way you had added that to - to your company, Spur (Steve: yep). And how did you add it to it?

Steve: So, um, I mean, this is - Encore really is, even though it's only six months old as a company, it's nine years in the making (Russ: o.k.). Um, so, after starting Spur in 2002, uh, I had a finance background and one of the things that was really exciting me about interactive (Russ: right) was the ability to measure and quantify the value (Russ: absolutely), right? Really put a (Russ: absolutely) ROI equation around it.

Russ: In my opinion (Steve: yeah), uh, that's sort of, uh, boy, it's - it's a little but - it's not exactly a science in my opinion (Steve: yeah). There's so many different ways to do (Steve: yeah) things and to measure them (Steve: it is art and science-not sure), it can (Steve: yeah) actually be confusing, and it can actually be sometimes difficult to believe the kind of metrics that you are given.

Steve: Well, the - the thing is, um, you know, digital is, you know, interactive, whether it's, you know, online is really the most measurable media (Russ: right), which means it has the most metrics (Russ: right, right, right). There's so many things to measure (Russ: right). And unfortunately, um, there's - the way that most people measure performance of their media really is - is not the appropriate way (Russ: o.k.), and that - that's really what Encore addresses (Russ: o.k.). But, back - stepping back nine years, I - you know, measurement was so important to me that I was like we got to have really good metrics to show the client's what they're getting (Russ: right). And, so we initially ended up, um, we were looking at licensing some tools and we found a company that, a little software company out of Austin, that had an analytics platform and they were doing some pretty innovative things then. So we started sourcing or reporting the measurement to them and then I think over about a year and a half we became their biggest client, they became our biggest vendor; so then we just acquired the company.

Russ: Cool

Steve: And so we've, then that - that platform that we acquired, um, is now we've been continuing to develop it over the last six years, five years now since we bought it, which has then allowed us to provide a, you know, a really much more comprehensive view into the performance of - of media across the channels.

Russ: And - and that's the core today of Encore Media (Steve unintelligible) Metrics. That's really cool. So I - I want to talk about that in a bit more detail (Steve: yeah), but - but kind of rolling back a little bit (Steve: yeah). So, you know, nevertheless, you had this company that did a lot more (Steve: yeah) than - than analytics, so, how did you resolve that?

Steve: And that was the challenge (Russ: yeah). Um, we - we ended up being one of these, you know, market driven companies (Russ: right) that does what the clients needed it to (Russ: right), but all of the sudden I found that we were just stretched so thin. We were doing, literally, strategy and planning, website development and optimization. We were doing multivaric (not sure?) testing for conversion rates (09:51-Russ: right). We were doing search marketing - both paid search and natural search; display advertising, and media buying, and ad serving (09:58-Russ: right), and email marketing (Russ: right) and social media enabling strategy (Russ: right). As a thirty person shop, there was - it was just impossible to be really that good (10:05-Russ: right). You know, to be that wide and that deep (Russ: sure), you just can't do it (Russ: sure). And that - that was one of the lessons. So, we started sourcing more and, you know, overseeing the - the planning and the project management more and truly I think that's the model toady that most are doing. They're realizing, we can't do it all in house (10:20-Russ: right), we can't, you know, be best of breed in every single category (Russ: right), so let's pick what we're really good at and over the last few years we basically became really good at really performance based media planning to buying campaign management. We'd source the search; the natural search, the paid search. We'd source the creative production and the design work. We sourced, um, basically everything except the planning and the buying and the measurement.

And then, so about two and a half years - oh, about two years ago in May of, uh, '09, I - I was at a conference and, um, it was really interesting. It was this I Media Summit, so every - like twice a year this group called, um - part of um - part of - I think it's part of, uh, Media Post - but, you know, this I Media connection where they basically bring together, you know, top agencies from around the country for -one is for, you know, collaborative brain storming and education, but then also you get pitched by all the vendors because you go for free (11:08-Russ: right), you know, for three days at a nice hotel like Las Pines (Russ: right) or the Hyatt (Russ: right), and then you have to sit through like, you know, one minute match ups - like a hundred of them. So, you know, their basically saying look, we'll bring you to this great resort, we'll educate you, you'll learn a lot, but you're going to get sold if that's cool.

And, actually, we liked it because we didn't - we got to see a lot of, uh, vendors we never really got (11:26-Russ: right, right) to see here in Houston. So - but it was funny, there was - it was agency day, I was there and there was probably 200 people in the room, uh, representing agencies - the biggest agencies and holding companies, you know, from - from, you know, from Publicis (?) and IPG and - and, um, Omnicon; the biggest agencies to small shops (11:45-Russ: right). And - and we basically had six different topics we could do breakout sessions of, and about half the room went to the reporting (11:52-Russ: Ah! O.k.) session. And - and I just heard, you know, people from big agencies with lots of resources saying, there are no tools; there are no platforms, nothing works that we're getting - the metrics just are not there that we need to be able to tell the story to our clients and understand what's going on. We're spending all our time in Excel trying to pool together all these different data sources. And I was like, wow, we do this. We've - like, everything they're saying, we do. So I started talking to some of them and I was like, would you consider sourcing that to us (12:18-Russ: right)? And they're like, don't you buy media? Yeah, that's one of the things we do. Well, like, you're competitive (12:24-Russ: right). So, that's really where the light bulb came on for me. I was like, o.k. (Russ: o.k.), we've got to get out of this competitiveness and focus on what we do that's unique and different and much more scalable. And, you know, and frankly, uh, much - really focus on, do one thing, do it world class, and something we could grow a really successful business from.

Russ: O.k. You have set the stage (Steve: right) now, and we'll back with more with Steve Latham, the Founder and CEO of Encore Media Metrics, after this. This is The BusinessMakers Show, heard on the radio and seen online at TheBusinessmakers.com.

[Commercial]

Russ: This is The BusinessMakers Show, heard on the radio and seen online at The BusinessMakers.com, and continuing on with Steve Latham, Founder and CEO of Encore Media Metrics. Now, Steve, you just - you just sort of set the stage when the idea trigger got pulled on, wait a minute, everybody needs this category that we've developed quite a capability in, uh, but we sort of have the conflicting other pieces of our business (Steve: right). How did you resolve it?

Steve: Well, I - I had to look at what do we do? Where's the growth opportunity? What's, you know, if we're a media agency, we're one of a thousand (Russ: right), you know, within a thousand miles of here (Russ: right). I mean (Russ: right), there's tons of - (unintelligible) combine media on behalf of the company (Russ: right). But, when it came to what do we have that's really, you know, that's unique, defensible, that has some intellectual property behind it (14:30-Russ: right), technology based, much more scalable business; then it really became obvious to me that we needed to get out of the agency business. Take our technology, our know how and capabilities, as well as our understanding of pain points (?) that agencies and brands deal with when it comes to measuring performance (14:43-Russ: mmhm) and just do that. And - and, um, and there were, you know, there were analogs for companies out there that just did analytics. You know, most of them were kind of self serve platforms (14:52-Russ: right). Like Omniture (unintelligible)

Russ: Right. But it - but it -but it seemed like nobody, apparently, was doing it so well that when you were at (Steve: right, right) this conference, there wouldn't have been a bunch (Steve: yeah) of people saying we need help

Steve: Well, that's the thing, there's - on the advertising side of the equation, there's really, uh, without getting too technical, there's the ad server, which serves the ad (Russ: mmhm), and then there's the site analytics platforms (Russ: mmhm) . Ad servers are really for serving ads and measuring reach (Russ: mmhm) of frequency. Analytics platforms, like Google Analytics, um, Omniture, etcetera, they're really about measuring site activity. Neither of them are really a measure - media measurement platform. And that's really what we do, is measure performance (Russ: o.k., o.k.) of media. You know, paid media, owned media (Russ: o.k.), and earned media too (Russ: o.k), to really understand, you know, at the end of the day, we're all trying to reach and engage customers through some form of media (Russ: right, right). So, when it comes to digital, I said, you know, we have - there's an opportunity here to be kind of the best in class (15:38-Russ: right). Especially if we can do it in a very efficient way, so it's very affordable for somebody (15:42-Russ: right) just to source all that to us (Russ: right) and let it run on our platform. So that was kind of the idea. Um, so I went down the path. I had some really big, um, uh, tough hurdles to overcome.

One is, you know, how do you make yourself dispensable when the agency's kind of been all about you for the last (Russ: right), you know, eight years (Russ: right)? Um, so, how does a, you know, an entrepreneur, he's the face (Russ: right) of the company say - build something and say hey, you don't need me, let me hand this (Russ: right) - why don't you give me some value for this [be]cause you're not going to need me anymore (Russ: right).

So that was the first part, is, I really had to step out of the operational side of it and let my team and - you know, really run with it and manage the clients and the accounts. Um, and then, secondly, had to figure out how do we, you know, find buyers here that are, you know, where this is going to make sense (16:23-Russ: right) for them.

Russ: To buy you the rest of your company

Steve: [Be]cause we would need those proceeds really to (Russ: right, right) - to seed the new company (Russ: right, right). And then, thirdly, you know, we've got a business plan - we have to create a business plan (Russ: right). You have to develop, uh, something - a whole different - it's one thing to do something internally (Russ: right), it's a different thing to productize it (Russ: right), and make it available to (Russ: right), you know, outside customers (Russ: sure) who don't - [be]cause everything we'd done - we'd done internally was all - we kind of knew the lingo. It was all...

Russ: Yeah, you were - you were using it - you were using it (.

Steve: So it was very different then to say then, o.k., now how are we going to package this; price it (Russ: right), market it, position it. Um, we had a lot to learn about the competitive landscape because everyone says, well how are you positioned, you know, versus these guys (Russ: right)? Never really had to think about that before, so, there was about - it took about a year for all that to take.

Russ: And you officially spun off (Steve: yeah); sold your - your agency business

Steve: In January

Russ: To somebody that was doing business with you? Or to...

Steve: Yeah, uh, it was - it was historically a direct marketing firm (Russ: o.k.) called DMN3 (Russ: o.k.) here in Houston. Um, great team, and, you know, good operator, so it made sense.

Russ: cool

Steve: Um, and it really freed me up to then go focus on, you know, taking our technology, productizing it, and - and creating something (Russ: o.k.) that had a lot higher ceiling as a business.

Russ: O.k. And then, obviously, uh, if you were going to be in that business, you wanted to be located where most of the customers were?

Steve: Well, you need to be (Russ: right, right). You know it - it's funny. Um, in this day and age where you can do everything virtually (Russ: right); we could've done this though Skype (Russ: right), you know (Russ: right, right), we could've done this from your house in Hawaii (Russ: right) really, whatever.

Russ: I - I don't have a house in Hawaii and I wish - I wish I did

Steve: I know, that's why I was laughing

Russ: If I did, we would do it

Steve: Yeah, if I did, you would be. Especially this time of year (Russ: right). But, um, at the end of the day, relationships still matter so much (Russ: right) and, it's kind of like someone that says hey, we want to be in the energy business (Russ: right) and we're going to service clients from New York (Russ: right). It's just really tough to do when all that business is here (Russ: right). Well, in the digital media landscape, New York has become really the vortex. I mean it's just sucking everything in (Russ: right) in terms of, you know, West Coast VCs have relocated there (Russ: right), all the media vendors are there (Russ: right), all the big media companies, all the big agencies (Russ: right), the whole ecosystem. [Be]cause we're one of about - our category is probably one of ten different categories that all fit to make the advertising ecosystem run.

Russ: But now you're set up there, you have office space there...

Steve: An office, and apartment, so I'm there about - right now I'm there about three weeks a month.

Russ: All right, we'll continue on with Steve Latham after this. This is The BusinessMakers Show, heard on the radio and seen online at TheBusinessMakers.com.

Russ: This is The BusinessMakers Show, heard on the radio and seen online at TheBusinessMakers.com; and continuing on with Steve Latham, Founder and CEO of Encore Media Metrics. Now, I - I - you and I talked before the interview and you gave me an overview. I want you to get into detail now on describing some of those things that - that you've developed; a capability - a strong capability, of accurately measuring for a customer.

Steve: Sure. So, um, you know, our - our mission for being really is helping marketers, whether it's brands, agencies, or -or even now media companies, optimize performance through better analytics and better metrics. And, we just do the measurement reporting as a - as a service and that's really what we focus on. (R says mm hmm several times throughout) And it's part art and science [be]cause it's - one, it's figuring out, you know, what's the right data to get (Russ: right). And then secondly, how do you then integrate all the data to tell the story and then how do you produce reports that people will actually get and make them actionable (Russ: right). Um, if I gave you, you know, a 500 row Excell spreadsheet with 20 columns, that's not really (Russ: right) an actionable report, right? (22:14-Russ: right) It might be a data set up (Russ: right) you can use in some way, but, um, you're basically going to say, what am I going to do with this. So, what we actually try to do is really make it simple to understand, you know, what's working and what's not (22:22-Russ: cool). How do you optimize? How do you, you know, reallocate your spending to get the best performance (Russ: mmhm, mmhm)? And that's - so that's really at the heart of what we do. Now how we do that, that's, you know, that's - so that's [the] tip of the iceberg (Russ: right); how we do it is all the part below the water (Russ: right). Um, it's quite a bit - we're - we're often referred to as an - an attribution vendor.

Russ: O.k.

Steve: I don't know if you've heard that term (Russ: mmhm). It's - it's really unique to our industry I think and it's about, uh, solving a really - a big problem every advertiser, every marketer, every company has (Russ: mmhm), which is, when there - when there analytics platform, whether that's Google Analytics or Omniture, gives credit for a visit or a lead, it attributes credit to the last click; the source of the last visit. So, if, for example, you, you know, you click on, you know, five of our ads, um, or five of somebody's ads, and then you come back to their site in that last click, there going to say well, this person who just came to our site or just bought from us or filled out a form, this is the source of their last visit so (can't tell what Steve's saying) get 100% of the credit, so.

Russ: The last one gets all the credit when - when the others might have played even a bigger role, right? Yeah.

Steve: Exactly. It's kind of like - the best analogy is, you know, is giving credit just to that fourth swimmer in a relay race (R says right several times). It's like, give the medal to him. The other three guys sit over there and watch while the fourth guy gets up there and gets the medal around his neck (Russ: o.k., o.k., o.k.). So, I think we all know that that's not really the best way to think about measuring. So what we do is we attribute the credit back to all of the touch points that (Russ: huh) precede a visitor conversion. Now clicks are fairly easy to do, so if somebody, you know, clicks on five of your ads then we can say, oh, that's pretty easy. We'll give each of these clicks (Russ: right), you know, 20% credit (Russ: right) and spread the credit across (Russ: right). And then reallocate, like, the cost per visit, cost per spending accordingly. What's harder to do is when you get into the display advertising. And, there's several things right now that are driving display advertising, where more and more money's coming into that. So, what's happening is, uh, more and more people are spending money on display, and then they're looking at their reports going, wow, our cost per visit; cost per action for display ads are terrible (Russ: mmhm) because, you know for search

Russ: People don't click on them

Steve: People don't click on ads (Russ: yeah). Um, there's actually - data shows now that people that, you know, click on ads are generally either, you know, undereducated or really really old (Russ: yeah-laughs). So, unless that's your target (Russ: right, right) audience, you know, then click through rates really don't matter (Russ: right, right) anymore. They're important for search (Russ: right) because you're really talking about the bottom of the funnel (Russ: right). But if you're at the top of the funnel creating awareness, consideration, preference for your brand, not just action, where people are ready to take action; they'll typically go to a search engine, type in exactly what they're looking for, you know, two or three or four or five word search and then - then they click through and buy, well that's - that's because it's at the very bottom of the funnel. But, that's being fed by all these opportunities that are being put in the funnel, and display advertising plays a really important role there, so. (R says yeah throughout)

Russ: Meaning - meaning people just see ads and even if they don't click on them, they generally have a positive impact, still. Yeah.

Steve: They do, it's - they do. Every study - people - people say oh no, I'm not influenced by ads, but then you ask them to name, you know, what car do you, you know, would you aspire to have? Uh, where would you like to live? You know, all these things it's like - and it correlates highly to, you know, who's advertising. But um, so the - the challenge though is if you see today, you know ten ads for - let's just pick a cruise out of Galveston. And like, and the next two days - let's say you see ten ads over the next few days and you're like, that'd be kind of fun. Get away; it's easy. We don't have to fly to Florida. We can just drive 40 minutes, jump on a cruise ship, go for five days down to the Caribbean; come back. Um, then you might go do a search for Caribbean cruises and then you'll see Royal Caribbean's Cruise Line at - I don't even know if they operate out of Galveston, I'm just making this up, but, and you're like, oh yeah, and you've already connected that their the ones advertising. So you click on their ad, you go to their site from a search, and then you book a cruise. So, let's say you saw ten ads, and then you did a search, and then you converted. So, now the big question is one, should that last click get all the credit? And I would say no. Then the question is, well, how much should it get? How much should those display ads get? And the answer is, well, it depends. And that's where we do - so what we do is really sync up all that data so we can basically pull in all of the ads server data. Which records who saw ads - not who, but what browser saw an ad; and it's just identified by a number or a cookie. And then we sync that up with people that took action; again, just a cookie number, not person, and we say o.k., this -this visitor, 1234 saw ten ads, did a search and converted. (R says right and mmhm, throughout)

Russ: And saw these ten at these sites. Yeah, yeah, yeah, right.

Steve: These ten ads, at this time, over the last three days. So, now what we have to do - what we do is called, uh, we put in place an attribution model. Which basically is a - a methodology approach to say how we're going to attribute credit across all those touch points. So, if we - if we come down to the conclusion that in this case for every five display ads - it's equivalent - that are seen is equivalent to one that is clicked on, then we would give, you know, one third, one third, one third. So we give credit two thirds to display, then to search. And then you would reattribute your cost per that, [be]cause instead of search getting 1 and display getting 0, two thirds, one third. So you - you - you divide that into what you spent and then you get our adjusted cost per action (Russ: wow, wow). So that's what we do and it's real simple...(R says right and mmhm throughout)

Russ: Well, and it seems like it would have value to - to anybody, yeah, yeah.

Steve: It's - every advertiser knows this is how they should be measured. Now, we're also working with a lot of media vendors that are saying how do we measure performance this way? [Be]cause there's also a big dearth in optimization tools on the media vendor side as well. So, we're working on some things. We actually haven't announced it yet. We'll be announcing in late September, um, some of our new supply site offerings (Russ: cool). But it's pretty exciting what we're doing there and, um, like I said, we're still self (????) for the next few weeks. But, so I won't say too much about it, but, um, it could actually put us in, um, an amazing position in - in our industry (unintelligible) (R says right and cool throughout)

Russ: Well, neat, that sounds exciting, that sounds exciting. And I - and I did like the example that you just gave on - you know on display ads. I mean, it's kind of like if you took it to the - to the traditional world, the guys driving down the road and sees, uh, outdoor advertising - six of them and finally the seventh one he says I'm going to go in and the seventh one gets all the credit, that's not right (Steve: yeah, yeah). It's all those others that did it. Cool.

Steve: And they get full credit.

Russ: Right, right. That's right

Steve: But - but - but the advertisers know it works, so they do it, right? Digitals are still like, well, you kind of have to prove it to me, you know, it's allegedly immeasurable, so we see a different standard a lot of times to (?) ads. Um, yeah, funny stories about that. (R says right throughout)

Russ: All right, well look, I - I want you to keep us, uh, updated. I actually make it to New York every once in a while; maybe we'll sit down there (Steve: sure). I'm sure you'll be back here (Steve: yeah). We'd love an update and, uh, we wish you all the luck in the world for Encore Media Metrics.

Steve: Thanks Russ, appreciate it.

Russ: All right, thanks a lot Steve. That's Steve Latham, Founder and CEO of Encore Media Metrics. This is The BusinessMakers Show, heard on the radio and seen online at TheBusinessMakers.com" width="75" height="75" alt="John Beddow and Russ Capper">