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Excite hired the former head of marketing at QVC to bolster its name recognition in the face of competition with America Online and Yahoo.
The second most-popular Internet directory behind Yahoo named Fred Siegel as its new senior vice president of marketing. Siegel a 20-year marketing and advertising veteran, will work to make Excite's (XCIT) brand as recognized as that of his former employer, TV's home-shopping king QVC. Siegel will develop and run all marketing and advertising campaigns for Excite and its WebCrawler search engine.
"There are a handful of online services that have the potential to break away and become leading media brands," said Siegel. "Excite certainly is one of them." He said the portal site will rely on advertising in traditional media, in addition to the Web, to reach potential users.
Before QVC, which is watched in about 60 million American homes, Siegel also served as an executive VP at Ketchum Advertising, a senior VP at the McCann-Erickson agency, and has created campaigns for the likes of Coca-Cola, Alka Seltzer, and Sony.
In a press release, Excite credited Siegel with steering QVC from the No. 2 position in TV shopping to No. 1, more than doubling revenues to US$2.4 billion last year.
"I think they are hoping to be more effective with their marketing than they have been in the past, to close the gap between them and Yahoo," said Andrea Williams, analyst with investment bank Volpe Brown Whelan.
Yahoo's traffic grew to 115 million pageviews a day in June, versus 95 million daily pageviews in March. Excite's network traffic was about 44 million pageviews per day in June, up 10 percent from March, the company said.
Excite's stock fell 19 cents to $39.44 Monday.
