Meredith Takes the Keys: Marketing Unit Lands Chrysler
12/10/09, Min
“Marketing services” is the new mantra among publishers as they try to follow their customers’ dollars away from traditional media and into more integrated “below-the-line” promotions, customer-relations, and custom publishing. Meredith’s Integrated Marketing unit has long been among the most evolved examples of this model in which publishers offer brands some of the expertise and services usually associated with advertising agencies. Meredith already boasts clients like Kraft, Nestle and Domino’s, and it even bought marketing firms Genex, Big Communications, O’Grady Meyers and took a strategic position in mobile agency Hyperfactory. And this week the company won Chrysler’s customer relationship management (CRM) business. Better still (for Meredith at least) it replaced Omnicom Group’s BBDO Detroit in that role. “We are the Agency of Record for their customer relationship management,” says Martin Reidy, president, Meredith Integrated Marketing. The duties include communicating with in-market and prospective customers via direct mail and email. “It also covers the full cadence of the ownership life cycle,” says Reidy. “Starting from the welcome packages through off-lease marketing as people’s leases mature and expire.”
