How'd that WSJ ad work out, anyway?

I caught up with Jack Turley, VP of sales and marketing for Gallagher’s Cardax brand in the Americas, and asked him about his thoughts on the decision to take out the ad in the Wall Street Journal. It was a long discussion that went all over the place, but here are the relevant bits: Sam: What was the impact of the ad, in your opinion? Jack: There’s a lot of ways to measure that impact. The most analytical way would be the web hits, I guess. We got five times the traffic that we normally get, and the visitors were scattered all over the world, but predominantly from the U.S., so I think the trade show, coupled with the Wall Street Journal, brought some of the awareness we were hoping for. From the booth traffic, considering what I saw at other booths, and as a relatively new entrant to the U.S., our booth was as busy as anyone else’s and it was certainly up from last year. We certainly had our share of current GE dealers come to wonder what we’re all about. It was kind of interesting. Some of them came not exactly sure what to make of us. So we gave them the quick tour, had them sit down with the senior management—that’s one of the things that makes us different: [company CEO] Bill Gallagher attends just about every trade show and wants to meet everyone that comes into the booth, which is a different sort of company to work for. Bill Gallagher might be dealing with the ambassador to Germany one day and have a screwdriver in his hand the next day, showing a guy how to work a panel. What was a bit unexpected was a few GE employees coming and sniffing around, and two of them actually handing us business cards and asking to keep them in mind as the expansion increases. Based on all of that, the Wall Street ad has been extremely successful. I bet 400 people at the show came up to me and gave me the equivalent of a high five. Sam: Could that impact have been created with something other than an ad in the Wall Street Journal? Jack: There’s a place for the industry trades, sure, but what I see is other companies out there trying to sell black boxes, and we’re much more of a solutions business. And that comes down from Bill, who’s an inventor, but also somebody who really wants to solve problems. So, with the ad, we’re not talking just to security dealers, but starting a dialog with the business world as a whole.