Wall Street Journal Story on 'MeMail' Quotes Brian Lord '98

May 26, 2007

Brian Lord 2007.jpg May 26, 2007, Greencastle, Ind. - "Brian Lord of Franklin, Tenn., views his ever-changing email signature as a helpful marketing tool," notes a Wall Street Journal article of the 1998 DePauw University graduate in a story headlined, "The Rise in MeMail." Katherine Rosman writes, "An agent for speakers and entertainers, Mr. Lord regularly rotates company-supplied email signatures that include the firm's logo and photographs of individual agents. There are also links to his bio, talent list and personal blog."

The text continues, "From his blog, business associates can learn that he doesn't like to shop for light fixtures on Saturdays with his wife, that he wishes Indiana hadn't recently decided to adopt daylight-saving time and that he clinched a school contest by properly spelling 'Nahum' when he was in fourth grade. 'I had just won what was likely the most dramatic comeback in [Kokomo Christian School] spelling bee history,' he wrote. Of his company's blog-linked email-sig, Mr. Lord says, 'We're not the biggest [agency] but we hopefully are one of the more hip ones.'"

The article notes that e-mail signatures (usually found at the bottom of messages) "began innocently with basic contact information and pithy, if annoying, quotes. ('It's nice to be important but it's more important to be nice.') But the phenomenon is quickly escalating, filling screens with photos, links to blogs, corporate logos and even promotional videos," Rosman reports. "Entrepreneurs are pushing email-signature downloads and forging product-placement deals with recording artists and clothing companies that want to embed their logos into people's sig files. Services like Yahoo! Mail and Gmail have updated their systems to more easily accommodate photos and graphics."