By Reid Kanaley
Inquirer Staff Writer

What's that noise around Mark Hughes? It must be the buzz.

Hughes aims to get people chattering. While working for Half.com, a Web marketplace founded in the Philadelphia area, Hughes pioneered advertising in fortune cookies. He engineered a publicity stunt to change an Oregon town's name to Half.com. He put advertisements in New York City urinals and on the hubcaps of Boston taxis.

Buzz buzz.

Now, with his own company, Buzzmarketing, the Swarthmore resident wants to sell other companies on the merits of fortune-cookie ads and other oddball attention-getters...

...Hughes, 37, spent three years in charge of marketing at Half.com, which was sold in 2000 to eBay Inc., of San Jose, Calif., in a deal valued at more than $300 million. Half.com still operates with 85 employees in Plymouth Meeting.

Hughes already had been a marketing executive for Pizza Hut and Pep Boys - Manny, Moe & Jack, the Philadelphia auto parts and service retailer. He has a degree in English from Boston University and an M.B.A. from Columbia University.

Hughes said that at Half.com, he became convinced that, in an era when only eight people out of 100 notice the average TV commercial, marketers have to be more creative.

In 1999, before Half.com had opened for business, Hughes' marketing team got the tiny town of Halfway, Ore., to temporarily rename itself Half.com. Reporters called. The company spent $100,000 on the prank, and Hughes estimated the publicity was worth $4 million...

...Hughes left Half.com last summer, and set up shop for Buzzmarketing recently in a Delaware County borough whose name is prominent in the advertising lexicon, Media. "I figured I wouldn't have to rename that town," he said.

..."There's more stuff like this coming," warned Hughes, who also has written a book about his experiences and is in search of a publisher. He said he hoped to come up with "a wild, outrageous, outlandish idea to put brands on the map" every year.

"It's the type of thing where people will say: 'Haven't we had enough of this?' And I think the answer is 'No.' "

Posted on Sat, Feb. 08, 2003 - Excerpt