Update
"Rising
to the Challenge" Program Addresses Post-9/11 Issues
Student
Conferences Spark Discussion, Promote Interaction
New
Director of MBA Career Services Focuses on Power of Alumni Network
Professorship
Brings Brierley's HBS Connection Full Circle
John
Mulroney: Center Stage at the Opera
Dean
Clark Visits Alumni in Europe
Professorship Brings Brierley's HBS Connection Full Circle
Harold
M. Brierley (MBA ’68), chairman and CEO of Brierley &
Partners, describes himself as “an accidental entrepreneur,”
having entered HBS as a chemical engineer planning to pursue a
management career in the oil industry. “HBS broadened my
horizons and served as the greenhouse in which I started my first
business,” he says from his office in Dallas, Texas. Now,
with his generous endowment of the chair held by HBS professor
John A. Deighton, Brierley’s involvement with the School
has come full circle. A specialist in marketing and information
technology, Deighton will no doubt nurture many future entrepreneurs
— accidental or otherwise — in his faculty role as the
Harold M. Brierley Professor of Business Administration.
After graduating as a Baker Scholar, Brierley entered
the DBA Program and worked as a research assistant for the legendary
HBS professor Charles M. Williams. While writing finance cases,
Brierley also volunteered to help his college fraternity find
a vendor to automate its 150,000 membership records. Failing to
find a specialist in the membership record-keeping arena, and
recognizing an opportunity, he and Thomas O. Jones (MBA ’68)
cofounded Epsilon Data Management. The company soon became one
of the nation’s foremost database marketing companies, helping
hundreds of America’s leading membership organizations and
nonprofit groups with their fundraising and record-keeping efforts.
“In helping charities strengthen their relationships with
their donors and members, Epsilon engineered many of the ‘customer
relationship’ techniques that make today’s customer
loyalty programs so successful,” says Brierley, who served
as Epsilon’s president and CEO for its first ten years.
In 1980, serving as the sole outside consultant for
the design of American Airlines’ AAdvantage program, Brierley
pioneered a customer loyalty program that would change the way
consumers would select their travel providers. “While the
goal of the program was to identify American’s best customers,
establish a direct relationship, and ideally ‘shift share’
a bit, no one ever dreamed that frequentflier miles would become
a multibillion-dollar source of incremental airline revenue,”
he notes. In 1982, Brierley was named vice president of sales
and advertising for Pan American World Airways, where he launched
WorldPass — a loyalty program that generated $400 million
of incremental revenue for an airline with $3 billion in gross
revenue.
After serving as senior vice president of marketing
for Continental Airlines, Brierley returned to his entrepreneurial
roots in 1985 to start a consulting firm specializing in the design
of customer loyalty programs. Brierley & Partners has evolved
into a technologybased marketing solutions company that helps
clients design and manage customer loyalty programs. With offices
in seven cities worldwide and over 250 employees, Brierley &
Partners’ recent clients include Blockbuster, Hertz, Hilton,
Epson, Lufthansa, the NFL, Nokia, Sony, UPS, and United Airlines.
“Well-crafted programs have generated hundreds of millions
of dollars of incremental revenue for some of the world’s
leading marketers, while ill-conceived programs have simply raised
the cost of doing business for others. Engineering loyalty is
an exciting blend of financial planning and creative thinking,”
says Brierley. “I’d design loyalty programs as a hobby,
if I weren’t blessed to have been able to make it my vocation!”
Brierley’s most recent loyalty venture is e-Rewards.
Participating members are paid to receive relevant e-mail commercial
messages and research surveys. Sponsored by seven of America’s
leading brands, more than 750,000 affluent consumers have enrolled.
“Rewarding consumers for their time will be the next major
loyalty battleground, as marketers struggle to establish and maintain
direct relationships with their customers,” declares Brierley.
“Hal Brierley has been ahead of the curve on many
great marketing ideas,” says Professor John Deighton. “He
pioneered database marketing when he founded Epsilon, and now
he is making permission e-mail marketing work. My research is
in interactive marketing, so it’s been fascinating to meet
Hal and learn what it takes to live on the frontier of marketing
practice for three decades.”
“John Deighton’s passion for marketing and
the art of managing customer relationships makes him the perfect
candidate to broaden the next generation’s understanding
of effective customer relationship management or ‘customer
loyalty’ execution,” observes Brierley.
A board member of numerous organizations, including
the Dallas Symphony Orchestra, The Dallas Center for the Performing
Arts, KERA-TV, The Dallas Opera, and the University of Maryland
College Park Foundation, Brierley is a firm believer in the importance
of giving back to the community. “It’s a source of deep
satisfaction that the database management tools and techniques
first developed at Epsilon have allowed hundreds of nonprofit
organizations to profitably strengthen their ties with their constituents,”
he declares. “Effective use of the computer for segmentation
and personalization has allowed organizations to increase dramatically
their annual giving. In the years ahead, effective use of e-mail
will again revolutionize how these organizations raise funds —
and lower their costs substantially.”
As a member of the Board of the Directors of the Associates,
Brierley is deeply committed to the School’s role in educating
the world’s future leaders. “HBS changed my life and
freed me to pursue my own entrepreneurial dreams. It’s exciting
to help tomorrow’s creative thinkers find their own opportunities,”
says Brierley. “I consider myself fortunate to be able to
share with the School and its future students a bit of a life’s
learning and to be a part of HBS’s continuing mission.”
RETURN TO THE TOP
John Mulroney: Center Stage at the Opera
Another
in a series of occasional articles on HBS graduates who have embarked
on second careers.
John P. Mulroney (91st AMP) became an opera fan years ago when
a work transfer led to a ten-year stint in London and Milan. He
was fascinated by the complexity of the productions. “It’s
a monstrous undertaking,” he remarks. “I remember wondering,
‘How in the name of God do they put this whole thing together?’”
As executive director of the nonprofit Opera Company of Philadelphia,
Mulroney is now responsible for doing just that.
In December 1998, Mulroney stepped down from his position
as president and COO of Rohm and Haas, the largest specialty chemicals
company in the United States. The longtime Philadelphia resident,
who started his forty-year career at Rohm and Haas as an engineer,
says he was ready for retirement but felt no inclination to start
taking it easy. So Mulroney literally picked up his desk and a
few chairs and moved across Independence Mall to his new office
at the Opera Company. “I was back at my same desk but in
a different business,” he says.
The contrasts with the private sector were stark, but
not surprising. The Opera had a much leaner staff, less management
training, and dramatically lower compensation. (Mulroney provides
his services pro bono.) “The nonprofit world can be difficult
for executives who are accustomed to efficiency and large-company,
big-budget solutions to problems,” Mulroney observes; when
he first became a member of the Opera’s board, the company
was on the verge of filing for Chapter 11. “There were a
few paydays when I had to write personal checks to cover the payroll,”
he recalls.
The Opera Company is now thriving, due in large part to Mulroney’s success as a fundraiser. His chief responsibilities include drafting the $10 million annual budget and then finding the means to support it. Fundraising, he says, has always intrigued him. He acknowledges that people don’t usually like to ask for donations and that “it can be downright embarrassing,” but he sees it as the ultimate challenge. “People give serious money to people who are serious about what they’re doing,” he notes. Since Mulroney assumed the role of executive director, the number of operas performed per season has more than doubled, from 16 to 35. He expects a $2 to $3 million budget increase over the next few years, barring any fundraising difficulties in the aftermath of September 11.
Although Mulroney’s hours are just as long as
they were at Rohm and Haas, he’s traded in late dinners with
corporate clients for evenings of Don Giovanni and working the
room at champagne receptions. (When pressed, Mulroney names Puccini’s
Tosca as his favorite work.) He acknowledges that his role is
important, but with no formal music training, he has no illusions
that he could run the whole show. Yes, money is essential, but
“a big, fat checkbook, without an artistic director? I couldn’t
do it. I couldn’t pick the singers,” he laughs. He views
the Opera Company from a business perspective — with a product,
a customer base, and quality issues — and has helped instill
that attitude in his staff. “It’s all about marketing
and having your own image,” he says.
Mulroney is pragmatic, not boastful, when he admits that his shoes
may be tough to fill. “It is the case for almost any corporate
type who joins a nonprofit. We bring new skills that may not have
existed naturally before. The organization can quickly become
rather dependent on you.” Once told that producing good opera
meant working as if one’s life depended on it, Mulroney,
66, has no plans to leave his current position. “I like doing
things as if my life depended on it,” he says.
— Amy Burton
Dean Clark Visits Alumni in Europe
In January, Dean Kim B. Clark traveled to Paris, London, and Frankfurt to update HBS alumni on the School’s European Research Initiative as well as on key activities back at Soldiers Field.
His stop in Paris included a visit to the headquarters
of the new HBS European Research Center, on the rue François
1er in Paris’s eighth arrondissement. In London, he
met with recent HBS graduates for an informative breakfast
where he discussed the School’s expanding Global Initiative.
The Dean’s Frankfurt agenda included an alumni reception
at J.P. Morgan, organized by Christoph-Matthias Brand (MBA
’94) and Heiner Thorborg (12th ISMP).
