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Staff
o by Angie•iaan
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The young founder of ePrize
keeps looking over the horizon.
GEORGE CANTOR
Special to the Jewish News
it hadn't been for studying jazz gui-
Ita r, Josh Linkner might never have
377
6/16
2005
32
orked up the nerve to jump into
the uncharted waters of Internet promo-
tions.
"Jazz musicians feel at home with
improvisation," says Linkner, in his new
Pleasant Ridge offices. "You just start to
play and figure it out as you go.
"I'm aware that this isn't the right
approach for some people. But I can
honestly say it was my experience with
music that made me willing to take
risks. You won't get very far in jazz or
business or anything else by avoiding
risks."
Linkner, 34, is founder and chief exec-
utive officer of ePrize, a 6-year-old com-
pany with $30 million a year in gross
sales and branches in New York,
Chicago, Los Angeles and
London. It has a client list
that includes 58 of the top
100 advertisers, as meas-
ured by dollars spent, in
the United States.
"Our core business is running interac-
tive promotions for large brand advertis-
ers," he says. "We build and develop on-
line sweepstakes and reward programs
for folks you have heard of Home
Depot, Procter and Gamble, Coke,
Ford.
"We're like a traditional advertising
agency in that we do creative designs
and make pretty pictures. But we're
technology-centric. We build the guts of
the programs — encode the sweepstakes
games, set up security, integrate it with
the client's Web site.
"We also do the administrative stuff
— writing the rules, procuring the
awards, taking care of the
fine print. We're at the
epicenter of those points.
"That's what our
strength is, and I'm a
great believer in focusing on your
strength, doing that better than anyone
else. You've heard the old saying, 'Don't
put all your eggs in one basket?' Well, I
believe the exact opposite. Be the best in
the world at what you do best. Would
ON TIE COVER
you rather be operated on by a surgeon
who has done a procedure three times or
one who has done it a thousand times?"
An Early Start
Linkner attended the Roeper School in
Bloomfield Hills and gave his bar mitz-
vah speech at the Birmingham Temple
about its founders, whom he credits
with encouraging him to "think creative-
ly." He and his family now belong to
Temple Shir Shalom.
Philanthropically, Linkner has served
on the board of Southfield-based JVS
and supports Farmington Hills-based
JARC and Federation's Annual
Campaign. He served on the JVS board
for three years, serving on its informa-
tion technology advisory committee as
well as marketing and business commit-