The Executive Team
Jason Kulpa, CEO and Founder
Jason brings strategic initiative to Underground Elephant. He is responsible for relationships and alliances with key media companies, networks, and ad distribution partners. Kulpa is known for his uncanny creation of win-win business development and reputation is rock solid in the industry.
He is a motivator, manager and marketing profit, when it comes to finding emerging markets and establishing foothold. Once anchored, he creates barrier to entry with savvy marketing play and streamlined supply chain management. Swift decision making and creativity position his companies to the head of the pack where they have long-term shelf life.
Previous to founding Underground Elephant, Jason launched another Advertising Agency in 2003. After aggressive growth and expansion he took the company public, along with three others, via a successful reverse merger in 2008. Putting a deal together during that time of dry capital markets was a testament to his long-term stance on creating win-win for everyone. The total money raised through private placement into a public entity was just over 10m dollars.
In his previous position, Jason was responsible for overseeing $US 80+ million in revenues, derived from CPA, CPC, and CPM products and services as President of a large lead generation company. In addition to managing the operations, he played a critical role in new business development, sales, compliance and developing an effective strategy.
Jason graduated from The School of Letters and Sciences at Arizona State University, with a Bachelor of Interdisciplinary Studies Degree in Business and Communication.
Jason resides in Mission Hills, San Diego, California, and is a passionate supporter of The Arsenal Football Club of the English Premier League.
Ken Potashner, Director
Ken brings a wealth of executive-level management experience from world-class technology companies and a proven track record for creating and expanding value at these corporations. He currently holds directorships at multiple important corporations.
Ken is also the Chairman of Newport Corporation, a $400 million revenue laser-based bioinstrumentation solution firm. While also a director of Applied Solar, Taxcient, OneStopSystems, eBridge and Nanotechnology.
Previously, Ken was President, Chief Executive Officer, and Chairman of Sonic Blue (formerly S3 Incorporated), a global supplier of digital media appliances and services. He successfully grew revenues from $0 to $300 million annual for digital media products in two years. Before that, Ken was President and Chief Executive Officer of Maxwell Technologies Inc., an important high-tech government contractor. There, he led Maxwell through the most successful turnaround in the U.S. in 1997, achieving an 800% increase in market capitalization. Before then, from 1994 to 1996, Ken was Executive Vice President and General Manager of Disk Drive Operations for Conner Peripherals, a manufacturer of computer storage systems. He returned the company to profitability and positioned the company for its eventual merger with Seagate. Previously, Ken was Vice President of Worldwide Product Engineering for Quantum Corporation, a manufacturer of computer disk drives.
Ken received his Bachelor's degree in Electrical Engineering from Lafayette College and a Master's degree in Electrical Engineering from Southern Methodist University.
Bill Huff, Director
As a Certified Public Accountant, Bill began his career with Arthur Anderson & Co. He then served as Chief Financial Officer for First Interstate Financial Services, Travelers Acceptance Corporation, and Family Fitness Centers.
At First Interstate, Bill was responsible for the successful registration and funding of $US 250 million in securitized assets. He developed systems and procedures that resulted in First Interstate growing from 30 branches ($120 million in receivables) to 70 branches ($500 million in receivables) in three years. Bill also played an important role in a number of startup companies, including mortgage, finance, equipment leasing, collection agency, and real estate development businesses.
Bill earned a Bachelor of Science in Business Administration from the University of Arizona with a major in Accounting. He later became a Certified Public Accountant.
Case Studies
A client approached Underground Elephant looking for a solution. They were settled in the Payday Debt Consolidation space and were
looking for candidates for their program. They had purchased leads previous but only ended up with unsecured debt leads which were
not what they were seeking.
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The company had also tried telemarketing leads but could not reach the cost per close goal to meet their needs to grow. They had a
set number in mind and most companies fell far from short.
Like any problem there are many ways to approach it. At first our inclination was to create micro websites and research keywords
for a paid search campaign. We also reached out to one of our trusted email partners who was in the payday space. We asked them
to send a approved ad creative to their list of previous cash advance clients. Both tests running side by side would give us some
data to go from.
The client provided us access to their CRM so we could watch in real-time what was working and the status of the account. We
monitored both pipes of traffic and the response. Overall, the contact rate was high and people seemed interested in the product.
However, at the cost per lead we quoted the company was falling short just like it had in the past. We were faced with the similar
issues our competition faced. At this point we needed an underground effort.
We tried a real-time SMS auto responder on a payday list and were surprised to see that most people did not respond. We tried a
click to call campaign as well and no one answered. We did however notice that people were calling us back to see who called them.
When we told them why we called them many of them were interested then in the service. While we could not service them, we called
our client and passed them forward.
We noticed that they were closing at a higher rate than all the other channels. We were determined to find a solution for our
client and they were pleased with the calls. They also gave us back a number of what they could pay for the leads which was nearly
half of where we started. We could provide them leads at that cost or cancel that part of the campaign. Faced with losing the
client and working for free, we made the decision to keep the lead campaign running until we could improve the conversions. The
client promised to raise the lead bounty based on conversions and we could track them in real-time.
It took trust on our part to work on this model but since we were generating the traffic we knew we could optimize the campaign to
lower costs and improve quality by monitoring what was working. We also needed a way to generate more calls without going against
our business model of using outside traffic sources or call centers.
The team gathered and thought about replacing the submit button with a phone number and tracking the calls. The bounty per call was
higher and more profitable than leads and the client wanted to lower cost per close. So we replaced the submit with a phone number
but the volume wasn’t there to support the effort on either side. We needed a way to allow our trusted mailers to send traffic to
the site and generate more calls. We also faced the time constraint of when calls could be generated. Our client wasn’t open
twenty four hours.
The team agreed on a one page email submit and to provide the email back to the mailer in exchange for the traffic which we managed.
There was also a bounty for each email to the mailer. We tracked the emails to make sure it backed out to a cost per action model
and started generating calls. The client was happy and so were our mailers.
To cover the time and cost of running mail more than just a few hours a day we redirected the page after hours with the consent of
the client and mailers generating leads. The result was a win-win situation for all parties involved.
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Companies were approaching us to generate education leads for them and we were very interested in entering the space. The dilemma
was that it was already crowded and a company needed robust technology to serve options to the web user.
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The elephant needed a value exchange and niche to also generate leads at a competitive price in order to proceed. After
careful research the team agreed that while most people are interested in returning to school or attending there was simply
not a way to pay for it. They needed a loan, but most adults were saddled with debt.
The Movement began by creating a directory for scholarships an providing a value exchange for the user. The second part was
finding long tail keywords and building break-out pages to capture web users with a basic interest. The second part was to
study that data and create a campaign to generate paid search traffic.
To compliment and be profitable, The Elephant allocated a team of search engine maestro’s to start building natural traffic
with articles and linking. Pretty soon the organic traffic started to compete with the paid.
A star was born and clients were happy with the traffic we generated with our new website Scholrshiplink.com It was another
win-win situation and has launched Underground Elephant into the mainstream space of education.
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We offer the ability to make your phone ring without becoming part of the sales process. And we make it simple for potential clients to reach-you and use your service.
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We generate calls with the use of the internet instead of call centers. Call us crazy, but we believe in reactive instead of
proactive marketing. Instead of calling and persuading, we simply place a phone number on our ads instead of a submit button. The
user who sought us through a search campaign has only one way to interact and that is to call. These calls can be golden as they
increase the contact rate to 100% and are usually priced around the same as a lead.
Your company’s phone number is placed on the ads and we run campaigns only during business hours to ensure you are not paying for
voicemails. Each call is tracked using our technology so it is easy to see how well your campaign is performing.
We offer the ability to make your phone ring without becoming part of the sales process. And we make it simple for potential
clients to reach-you and use your service.
Would you like to call us and see how it works?
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