A New Financial Industry Ratings Service

The latest online ratings service to enter the fold launched late last month. Financialjoe.com is an Internet platform that enables investors to collaboratively monitor the services they receive from financial advisors and their firms.

To collect the ratings information, financialjoe.com asks users to complete an online questionnaire containing 18 questions related to the service they receive by their financial advisors. This enables other investors who also work with those financial advisors to learn this feedback. Custom pages store specified advisor and firms for users to regularly monitor. If a client is treated in an unethical manner by an advisor, that client can access his "My Advisors" page and change the rating for his advisor. Investors who share that advisor are immediately notified through internal and external email.

Financialjoe.com is promoting the service as a new tool that enables individual investors to communicate with each other and expose financial advisors or brokerage firms that provide poor service or practice unethically.

With an influx of online ratings services on the Web, it's no surprise that a service would target financial advisors specifically. Nearly all services providers have been impacted by the existence of online ratings. Financialjoe.com is also taking advantage of another Internet-driven service, social networking, to drive its new launch, which is an innovative twist. However, as with all ratings services, the buyer must still be aware. Other users can't be absolutely convinced that all ratings are legitimate; that they haven't been created by friends of an advisor. So, users can't totally rely on the information they receive through financialjoe.com. It will be interesting to see if financialjoe.com can survive in the marketplace--it certainly needs a high-profile marketing campaign to promote its wares. If not, financialjoe.com could be an interesting offering for a finance-related organization that wants to offer financialjoe.com data as a value-added service. This tool should have a decent shelf life, regardless of who decides to use it.

Black Book Launches New Tool

Black Book, a publisher of vehicle appraisal guides, this week launched Finance Advance, a market driven value that establishes the appropriate base value for financial institutions to use as a basis for advancing funds. The value reflects the pre-owned vehicle industry's improvement in vehicle reconditioning standards, extended warranties, certified pre-owned vehicle programs and the overall quality of new vehicles.

Through an evaluation of the market, Black Book has created this single Finance Advance value that reflects the more typical front-line ready vehicles held for retail sale. The company expects the value to provide a more accurate baseline from which to lend.

Black Book has made Finance Advance available in all of the company's products, from printed guidebooks and PDAs to the Internet. The new offering also interfaces with Dealership Management Systems. Black Book's stable of vehicle appraisal guides is published by National Auto Research, a unit of Hearst Business Media. Customers include new and used car dealers, lenders, manufacturers, fleet remarketers and government agencies.

This particular offering represents a very clever variation on an established product line. It really helps solidify Black Book's position in the market and among its customers as an authority in the field. While this new tool brings together so many factors within the marketplace, the concept itself is relatively simple for potential customers to understand and recognize its value--and make a purchase.

A Hollywood Deal

Hollywood Media Corp., a provider of news, information and ticketing that served the entertainment and media industries, this week announced that it has sold its Source business to West World Media LLC for $23 million in cash. The Source segment includes the CinemaSource, EventSource and ExhibitorAds properties.

CinemaSource is a supplier of movie showtimes data as measured by market share in the U.S. and Canada. It also licenses movie showtime listings and other content to its customers, which include newspapers, wireless companies and other media outlets. EventSource compiles and licenses local listings of live events (such as concerts, sporting events, fairs and shows). The Exhibitor Ads part of the business provides movie exhibitors with newspaper advertising services and other exhibitor marketing services.

The deal ultimately returns the Source operations to their original owner. West World Media's Brett West founded the Source business in 1995 before selling it to Hollywood Media in 1999. West was president of Hollywood Media's Source business. As part of the deal, both companies have signed a multi-year data sharing agreement which calls for Hollywood Media and West World Media to continue providing each other with content, including West World Media's provision of movie showtimes and events data to Hollywood Media and Hollywood Media's provision of movie and entertainment-related content to West World Media.

Hollywood Media will continue to focus on its current stable of properties, which includes a Broadway Ticking division (Broadway.com, 1-800-Broadway, Theatre Direct International and London-based Theatre.com), and an Ad Sales division (Hollywood.com and U.K.-based CinemasOnline). Hollywood Media also owns Hollywood.com Television, a free VOD cable TV network and a minority interest in MovieTickets.com.

It seems like Hollywood Media hasn't completely closed the door on its Source properties, especially with the content-sharing deal it will maintain with West World Media. And maybe it shouldn't. If anything, this should make the transition back to West World ownership rather seamless. Yet it wouldn't be surprising if this particular facet of the sale remains in place even longer. Both companies' properties are certainly complementary and may be better suited to remain affiliated.

IHS, PCNAlert Join Forces to Create Complete Solution

Technical information provider IHS Inc. this week announced its acquisition of the assets of PCNAlert from SupplyEdge Inc. for $10 million in cash. PCNAlert is a component event management solution provider that produces such offers as product change notifications (PCNs) and end-of-life (EOL) notifications for the electronic components industry.

IHS plans to integrate PCNAlert's portfolio into its electronic components business as an add-on to the product line. IHS expects PCNAlert's integration into the IHS proprietary components database to help the company provide customers with an end-to-end engineering obsolescence management solution. It will enable those customers--such as component manufacturers, original equipment manufacturers (OEM and electronic manufacturing services (EMS)--to identify and solve potential part obsolescence issue early in their processes.

The main goal for directory and database publishers these days is to create complete, end-to-end solutions for customers; solutions that assist customers in every step of their day-to-day work lives. In order to continue to be relevant with customers, publishers must provide these solutions that solve each and every problem customers face in their businesses. It's one of the best ways to build customer loyalty. IHS certainly had this strategy in mind when the company selected PCNAlert as its latest acquisition. Customers will undoubtedly recognize the value of this deal very quickly--and they will most likely renew their subscription to IHS's database just as fast.

Journalists as Marketers

Non-profit information provider GuideStar last week launched GuideStar Premium 2.0, which includes the addition of an organization download and a people search.

Users can now download non-profit information from the GuideStar database into an Excel file. They can select up to 17 fields of information, such as organization address, National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities (NTEE) code, total revenue and total expenses. Up to 5,000 records a month can be downloaded. The people search feature allows subscribers to search the GuideStar database for individuals by name. From the collection of more than 3.3 million non-profit officers and employees, users can locate a person's organization, title and compensation. Users can also identify relationships between organizations. According to GuideStar officials, the new features were creating in response to customer demand.

A free upgrade is available for current GuideStar Premium subscribers. The service is $100 a month or $1,000 a year for new subscribers. Journalists receive 50 percent off an annual subscription, with IRE (Investigative Reporters and Editors) members receiving discounts of 70 percent to 80 percent, depending on the circulation or market size of their publication.

It's very interesting and very smart for GuideStar to offer such incentives to journalists. It's somewhat surprising that other directory and database publishers don't do the same. Journalists are viral marketing agents who can tout a product more effectively than a traditional marketing campaign. They have tremendous reach and influence on many individuals; and their praise is certainly genuine. It might not be free, but this is a very clever way in which to (subtly) market a product line.