osforus is a full-service creative marketing and advertising
company based in Austin, Texas. We help companies launch products, attract prospects, generate leads, shorten sales cycles, integrate media, and measure performance.
We specialize in business-to-business technology providers, but there is no marketing assignment that our team cannot bring value to. And everything we do is guided by a practical philosophy that aligns our interests with those of our clients: “The idea is to sell something.”
A Brief History of fosforus
“Yeah, those fosforus guys… They tried to kill me in prison.”
James Frey, author of — A Million Little Pieces, January 2006
The company that is now known as
fosforus was founded approximately 218 years ago in pre-Revolutionary Paris by a brewer or self-styled “fomenteur,” Emile Jean-Jacques Fosfor, who possessed what one historian referred to as “an uncanny gift for timing… and little else.”
Fosfor is credited with having invented a process for brewing beer that would glow in the dark.
He went so far as to produce promotional literature that extolled, among other virtues, the beer’s usefulness as “a lamp to study one’s Holy Bible by,” as a “source of endless amusement for one’s children,” and as a possible “rescue beacon for stranded seamen.”
There was, however, one slight problem with the Parisian brewer’s recipe.
It was deadly poisonous. Tasty, though.
“Within the sixty gates, there is now a strange amusement. A person drinks a cup or two of the rich amber elixir and declares that he has never tasted anything more delicious in his life. Then a most curious and theatric thing occurs: He announces that his thoughts have never been more lucid. Then with his head rolling to and fro and a look of wide-eyed, messianic delirium, this poor, amusing soul issues forth strange proclamations as if dictated to him from another realm. Words that are not words and names that are not names — references that are references but to what? — are spoken in speaking song: “miniskirt,” “Roland Barthes,” “simulacrum,” “rabble-browser,” “Merton,” “serendipity,” “exogeny,” “indigeny,” and “Umberto.” Then the storm breaks and the man’s performance ends. And so, too, his life. Often applause erupts from the gathered crowd.”
From The Letters of M. d’Alembert, 1788
As Fosfor noted in his memoir,
Seeing Things with My Beer, published in 1813, “In hindsight, I suppose it was fortunate that I never acquired any taste for my light-beer. I am fully engaged in and fascinated by the act of creation only, not the consumption of it.”
Despite what might have been perceived as an insurmountable marketing impediment (its being poisonous and all), “Fosfor’s Lamp of Liberty Beer” became an immediate sensation and the gift of choice from aspiring working-class folk to members of the Paris upper classes.
Today,
fosforus, the company named for Jacques Fosfor, thrives as a purveyor of premium business-to-business marketing, interactive design, and story-crafting services in Austin, Texas.
The
fosforus motto, etched on the threshold of our headquarters entryway, reads:
“The best songs seduce you and change you with their marvelous logic. Similarly, the lived life is a composition: the creation of an uncompromised, goofy, oddly perfect little world. If you are reasonably secure in this knowledge, everything else will take care of itself. Still, if you can find a way to get bought by Google, go for it.”
fosforus
The Element of Surprise
Since 1788
Contact us.
Business-to-Business Technology
Our core team consists of in-house creative, account service,
programming, database, and media professionals.
Our typical sweet spot is helping B2B technology marketers connect with executive and technical audiences. We also specialize in creating targeted executive and direct marketing programs, and in developing and designing effective Web sites, results-driven event promotions, and interactive direct marketing, including media planning.
In short, we specialize in the kinds of projects that don’t allow marketing firms to hide or pretend.
Repeat Business. Repeat Business.
At
fosforus, we don’t invest a lot of time or energy in new business development.
Instead, we invest in long-term relationships with our clients. Our clients view their
fosforus relationship as critical to their own career growth. That’s why four of our current clients have worked with us at least twice before. Indeed, one of our newest clients is, in fact, one of our oldest — he began working with the team that became
fosforus back in 1998.
Repeat business is a hallmark of a successful service company. And our repeat business is a source of company pride.
The (Truly Magic) Magic Box
In
Profiles of the Future (1961), Arthur C. Clarke, the English physicist and noted science fiction author, declared his “third law”:
“Any sufficiently advanced technology is
indistinguishable from magic.”
For customers of Pittsburgh-based supply chain optimization company, SmartOps, the results of using the company’s Multistage Inventory Planning and Optimization (MIPO™) must seem magical, indeed.
In fact, John Deere, alone, has saved nearly $1 billion by using MIPO.
If we were to tell you that SmartOps has averaged an 18-22% response rate (measured in actual appointments with senior supply chain executives at giant, name-brand companies) using a Fosforus-created “Magic Box” program, you might think that we're indulging in some magical thinking.
We aren’t. The results are real. (And, credit where credit is due: follow-up by SmartOps inside sales team has been, in a word, relentless.) Perhaps you would like to arrange some magic of your own.
Let us know.
The Company Made Possible by a Book
Fosforus Owes Its Existence to a Single Book
The marketing and interactive design firm that is
fosforus owes its existence to a single book.
Interestingly enough, it is not a book that
we wrote. It is not even a book in which we are mentioned. To compound this mystery, the book is, of all things, a work of fiction.
What Is This Mysterious Book?
The Goal by Eli Goldratt, originally published in 1984.
A first-of-its-kind “business novel,”
The Goal explains Goldratt’s pioneering supply chain management concept, “The Theory of Constraints,” by way of a reality-based fable. (
A recent interview with Goldratt).
Had
The Goal not been published, it is likely that Ken Sharma (a Goldratt follower) would never have cofounded the supply chain management software company i2 in 1988.
And Had i2 Not Been Founded…
If i2 had not been founded, the team that is now known as
fosforus would not have worked for i2 from the summer of 1998 to the end of 2000, handling over 220 separate marketing, direct marketing, online promotions, and interactive design projects — everything from the promotion of the annual PLANET conference to the $7 million launch of the i2 TradeMatrix platform in Q1 2000.
Indeed, Ariba/FreeMarkets Called On Us
Had our team not worked with i2, we would never have been introduced to FreeMarkets (now Ariba) and completed over 300 separate direct marketing, online promotions and interactive design projects. (Indeed, FreeMarkets called on us
precisely because of our i2 work.)
SAP, Direct + Online + Event Promotions
And had we not worked for i2 and FreeMarkets,
fosforus would not have begun its work with SAP Americas back in March 2003. Our ongoing SAP relationship has encompassed over 330 separate direct marketing, online marketing, and event promotions projects — including the promotion of SAP Business Forums and the direct marketing launch of the SAP Safe Passage Program (designed to attract PeopleSoft and JDE customers away from Oracle.)
Virtually Every Aspect Of Supply Chain Managment
So one book started it all.
Goldratt’s pioneering work, taking abstract supply chain concepts and bringing them to life, eventually brought
fosforus to life, as well.
Since our in-depth marketing and promotions work for i2, the
fosforus team of creative and marketing professionals has become familiar with virtually every aspect of supply chain management, from procurement and sourcing (FreeMarkets/Ariba) and event management (mySAP SCM) to inventory optimization (our Pittsburgh client, SmartOps), and all the links in between.
Where does the
fosforus strategic creative and relationship marketing supply chain story head next?
Our Loving Arms
Our Loving Arms is a State of Texas-certified, Medicare-approved assisted living and geriatric care center located in historic San Angelo, Texas.
We offer 20 assisted-living apartments in a lovely, restored 19th-century opera house as well as a 45-bed skilled nursing annex.
At Our Loving Arms, your loved ones will benefit from:
- Small-town, community-based care
- Attractive facilities and stimulating surroundings
- First-class kitchens and communal meal service
- Fun cultural/learning opportunities and classes
- Ready access to the region’s best medical care
- Internet-based camera “connections” with out-of-state family members and friends in other cities
- And our highly acclaimed, award-winning “Reloading Life” Program that features genteel training in the use and maintenance of (mostly) small firearms.
When you entrust the care of your loved ones to Our Loving Arms, you can take heart in the sure knowledge that our skilled staff is dedicated to helping them become more independent, more engaged with their surroundings, and, frankly, better able to defend themselves against an increasingly hostile and unpredictable world.
OUR LOVING ARMS
“Regenerative Senior Care in a Classic Texas Small-Town Setting”
820 Avenue B
San Angelo, Texas
76903
COMING SOON:
“Reloading Life” Newsletter
Beer Cow Industries
We at Beer Cow Industries, founded by the brothers Mel and Falter Trace in Hempstead, Texas, in 1967, are the makers of The Beer Cow (marketed as The Ale Udder in the United Kingdom, The DraftDugger in Canada, Mother of Intoxication in India, Fat Party Now Joy in Japan, and Constant Companion in the former Soviet Union) — the amazing, suspendable beer container/dispenser with patented PullTap Flexi-Flow technology to ensure quick and foamless satisfaction.
In addition, through our Beer Cow Agrilabs subsidiary, we are breeders and marketers of The Real Beer Cow — a genetically modified, and nutritionally supplemented “draft cow.” Given proper care and advanced nutritional supplements, The Real Beer Cow will provide, as our jingle says, “pail after pail and year after year of farm-fresh beer.” (As odd as all this must seem, we assure you that we aren't kidding, and we have the venture capital to prove it.)
Beer Cow Industries
What Is The Selling Nucleus?
The Selling Nucleus is a core set of communications, processes, information, programs, and messages that help a prospective customer (at various points in a sales cycle) categorize, evaluate, and appreciate what your company has to offer. In addition,
The Selling Nucleus helps establish trust between your brand and prospects.
What’s In The Selling Nucleus?
The Selling Nucleus contains lots of familiar items (demos, white papers, analyst reports, etc.). But
The Selling Nucleus is more than just the “fundamental stuff” of marketing communications and sales support. It requires organization and a system, e.g., a contact strategy. Time, i.e., “timeliness of response,” adds another dimension to
The Selling Nucleus: Marketers must have a system in place to ensure quick action and follow-up once an “unwashed prospect” appears at their door.
One way of understanding
The Selling Nucleus is to adopt what we at
Fosforus call
outside-in thinking or “the Martian’s eye view” of your company. Ignore for a moment all that you know and love about your company. Forget what you know about the time it took to develop your service or product or how hard it was to secure funding or just how wonderful your employees are. Look at your company with the “Martian’s eye view.”
First rule of
The Selling Nucleus:
Martians don’t care. Second rule:
Martians are actively fleeing your sales and marketing messages.
Consider the reality of someone who has encountered your marketing message or brand for the first time. Ask yourself the following questions:
- How do I quickly orient this stranger from a strange land to what we have to offer?
- What sort of messages must they see to feel comfortable with what we’re selling and with who we are?
- How can I encourage the anonymous visitor to my Web site to hold up their hand and indicate interest and to provide some contact information?
- Unless clearly communicated and tied to a very real set of challenges the market faces, all products and services can seem fuzzy and abstract, so how do I bring our product and service to life and make them TANGIBLE and COMPELLING?
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