Week 6: The Marketing Campaign and Subrosa Reports

10 March, 2008 9:00-5:00 This week: 8 hrs. Total: 48.0 hrs.

The investigation industry has been changing over the past years. Ginter Investigations is steadily getting more and more private cases, and less workers comp cases, which used to be the mainstay. As a result, Kurt and Sandy have decided to send out company postcards advertising their services to various Marin attorneys. My father works in marketing, and he often asks my advice about the wording and layout of marketing devices, so I think I have a pretty good eye for that sort of thing. Anyhow, I made a few suggestions for the postcards, and spent much of the rest of the day compiling and formating the addresses for them. At the end of the day, I wrote my first subrosa report, which detailed the events of the surveillance I had been on with Bob Estes. Basically, it involves taking the heavily abbreviated, scrawled investigator notes and typing them into a coherent, clean report for the client.

I have been talking to Kurt and Sandy about what brought them to the field of Investigation. Kurt actually has a degree in wildlife management, but got a job at a big PI firm in San Francisco in the early 80s. He found that he liked, and was very good at investigation, and in 1985 got his own PI license and started Ginter Investigations. Sandy's background is with a big appliance company, and she took over the administrative end of Ginter Investigations, presumably once she and Kurt were married.