A Lexington marketing company is celebrating 25 years in business as it revels in its journey from internet start-up iHigh.com in 1999 to today’s wide-ranging strategy and action company called Brainbox Intelligent Marketing. The company operates in new offices located in The Square in downtown Lexington.
Samantha Capley
BBIM STAFF PICTURES - R.FORD
Rick Ford
It all began at Host Communications, where Rick Ford, Brainbox’s founder and chief executive officer, and Host colleague Tim Campbell were asked to “take Host into the internet age,” recalls Ford. “We had no internet presence. We were already working with the NCAA and many colleges. So we started building college websites, and that went well. We put up the first NCAA Final Four website, and it went nuts with millions of hits in the first few weeks, even though we had not officially announced it.”
Back then, Host also had a division to promote high school athletics. Ford and Campbell were then asked to “build something for the internet.” The pair wrote a business plan for a high school website internet network. “It sounds parochial, but back then few high schools had websites,” said Ford. “We built a template and got 5,800 schools in 37 states on it in the first 18 months. iHigh.com was born.”
iHigh.com gave high schools free web tools and video streaming so students, athletes, coaches, and boosters could follow sports and other school activities online. They had access to activity schedules and statistics locally, statewide, and nationwide.
But just as the business was gaining steam, the dot-com bubble burst, and iHigh.com was among the many thousands of businesses impacted. Ford says the company was in its second phase of raising capital and was expecting to get the money when a large bank abruptly shut off the money spigot. iHigh’s staff size plummeted from 83 to just four, and the company teetered.
To survive, iHigh.com evolved into an activation marketing company. One idea that re-energized it was the creation in 2004 of the Great American Rivalry Series. The series promotes the best high school football rivalry games across the nation. Each year, targeted high school teams are invited to join the series. Only true rivals participate in advance of their big, do-or-die game of the year.
The Great American Rivalry Series, created in 2004 to promote the best high school football rivalry games across the nation, remains a marquee program for Brainbox Intelligent Marketing.
Brainbox does considerable digital marketing through social media and email to publicize the upcoming games. In-person activities might also include parades, bonfires, and pep rallies. “Currently, we have been to 1,184 rivalry games in 47 states, with as many as 104 such games played in one season,” said Scott Bridegam, Brainbox’s chief operating officer, who joined the company in 2017.
Scott Bridegam
“The two teams make the game what it is. We just tell the world about it, to amplify it,” says Ford, who himself played in a couple of big rivalry high school football games in the late ’60s — namely the DuPont Manual-Male game played on Thanksgiving Day in Louisville. That rivalry inspired him to later help create the Great American Rivalry Series.
Bridegam is proud of the series concept. “We are the largest and longest-running high school sports marketing property in the country. And it is based right here in Lexington, Kentucky, and began as an internet start-up.”
By 2015, the company decided it was no longer iHigh.com but an innovative marketing company, so it rebranded itself as Brainbox. The rebranded company seeks to solve key problems for its clients and help them reach their target audiences in innovative ways.
Bridegam was part of the company-wide reconstruction. “By beginning as an internet start-up — being in the digital space even before there was digital space the way people see it today — we laid a foundation to build upon,” he said. “We realized we had great connections in that high school space. I came on board to organize and systemize the way we scaled the company to replicate what we were doing when iHigh started.”
Today, Brainbox has a staff of 42. “In 2020, many marketing agencies closed their doors during the pandemic. We did not,” said Ford. “When the world ‘came back,’ many clients that had been away got back on board.”
Brainbox executives are especially proud of a particular case study in its portfolio. The Student Loan Finance Corporation approached Brainbox about how it could market to exceptional students who would obtain loans, attend college, and start careers. Brainbox suggested targeting STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) high school students.
Brainbox staff teamed up with James Canton, a futurist and head of a think tank that helps organizations with planning. What emerged from the collaboration was a ten-foot-tall, basketball-court-sized immersive and interactive experience that students could walk through.
Called FutureLab: The Innovation Expo, the traveling exhibit was a hit. “It had six or seven different cubicles, all of which we created from scratch,” Ford said. “Then we created a website to support it. I would say it was as impactful as anything we ever did because we created it out of thin air, and it lasted ten years. That is marketing — taking a germ of an idea and turning it into an actual thing.”
Ken Halvorsen, chief operating officer for the Student Loan Finance Corporation, also admired the Expo. “FutureLab allows for another thought process where students can think about what else is out there.”
Brainbox’s future remains solid in sports. For 25 years, it has been in the college space but now will be in it even more after announcing in 2023 it is the marketing company for Athlete Advantage, a leading name, image, and likeness (NIL) agency that works with college athletes.
“We are an equity shareholder in the company,” Ford said. “We see Athlete Advantage as being like we were 25 years ago. They are today cobbling out a business that did not even exist until recently, and they are learning as they go.”