CARLSON MARKETING GROUP AND PEPPERS & ROGERS GROUP JOIN FORCES (email this article)

MINNEAPOLIS and NORWALK, Conn. (August 13, 2003) -- Carlson Marketing Group, a recognized leader in Relationship Marketing, today announced it has entered into an agreement to acquire Peppers & Rogers Group (Company Profile, Past Stories, Case Studies), the leading authority on customer-based business strategy.  Together, Carlson Marketing and Peppers & Rogers Group will help global Fortune 500 companies accelerate the development and execution of their customer-based business initiatives to grow the overall value of their customer base and drive increased business results.  
Better Relationships.  Better Results.
      “We have built our business around the belief that if you want better results you need to build better relationships,” said Jim Ryan, president and chief executive officer, Carlson Marketing Group.  “In order to strengthen our capabilities and continue growing the business, we made the strategic decision to join forces with Peppers and Rogers Group.  The business philosophies of our two companies are entirely complementary and our coming together will create an entity that is unique in the marketplace.  By joining forces, we now provide our clients a truly integrated solution that delivers the gold standard in strategy, program design, execution and measurement all under the same roof. ”

Accelerating Customer-Based Initiatives
      “At Peppers and Rogers Group, we have been focused on building customer-based business strategies for over a decade,” said Steve Skinner, president, Peppers & Rogers Group.  “At times however, we have seen our strategies lose some of their power in the translation to execution.  Sometimes there’s a disconnect because the vendors don’t share the same vision.  In many cases, our clients have been asking us to drive our strategies all the way through execution.  The combination of Carlson Marketing Group and Peppers and Rogers Group will allow us to provide clients with a fully-integrated business solution where the architect and the builder are focused on the same thing – achieving bottom line results for our clients.”
Two Strong Players on the Same Team
Both Peppers & Rogers Group and Carlson Marketing Group will maintain their individual identities, but will actively collaborate on solution development in their clients’ best interests.  Both firms will continue to be “technology agnostic,” remaining flexible to working with any technology when it will drive business results for clients.
Ten years ago, founders Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D., coined the phrase  “one to one” to illustrate the revolutionary concept of treating customers individually to increase their value to a firm.  Through their management consulting work, Peppers & Rogers Group has transformed “one to one”  from a theoretical concept to a practical methodology that drives business results.  With a focus on helping companies increase the value of their customer base, Peppers & Rogers Group provides strategies and tactics to gain a measurable and sustainable competitive advantage.  

Carlson Marketing Group helps its clients grow the value of their customer base by creating a detailed, integrated Customer Relationship Management (CRM) implementation plan that turns customer-based strategies into results. Carlson Marketing Group has long advocated building better relationships with customers, employees and business partners as the framework for implementing one-to-one strategies.  
“This is the perfect marriage,” said Martha Rogers, Ph.D., founding partner, Peppers & Rogers Group.  “In our work with clients across many industries and business models, we have learned that for companies to implement high-impact customer-based business initiatives, they require a clearly defined strategy that is supported by practical, measurable programs. The merger of our firms allows us to deliver on this promise.”
      “We believe that our relationship with Carlson Marketing will further strengthen our consulting methodology,” commented Don Peppers, founding partner, Peppers & Rogers Group.  “As we get more involved in the implementation, we will be able to add new learnings that will help drive additional bottom-line impact.”
      “In today's challenging marketplace, companies want an end-to-end solution for the creation and implementation of their customer-centric strategies.  They want to see results and they want one entity to be responsible for creating and delivering them,” concluded Ryan.  “The union of Carlson Marketing and Peppers and Rogers Group emphasizes our commitment to making a difference for our clients, their customers, employees, partners and ultimately, their bottom line.”

Peppers & Rogers Group has more than 100 employees and will continue to operate under its own name, as part of Carlson Marketing Group, out of its headquarters in Norwalk, Connecticut.  It also will continue to stimulate the marketplace with independent thought leadership published through the company’s various print and on- line publications and speaking programs.
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Editor's note:
About Carlson Marketing Group
Carlson Marketing Group, a recognized leader in Relationship Marketing, helps global Fortune 1000 clients increase their ROI by designing integrated marketing strategies that build better relationships with the audiences that clients depend on for their success: employees, channel partners, and consumers. Ranked by Advertising Age Magazine as the largest marketing services agency in the U.S., Carlson Marketing also has an extensive global presence with offices in Europe, Asia-Pacific, Canada and South America. Carlson Marketing Group is one of the major operating groups of Carlson Companies, which is recognized as one of the top 100 companies to work for by Fortune and Working Mother magazines. The National Women Business Owners Corporation (NWBOC) recently certified Carlson Marketing Group as a woman-owned and controlled business.

Carlson Marketing Group's corporate headquarters is located in Minneapolis, Minn. The company has a presence in the following major North American business markets: Atlanta, Bloomington (Ill.), Boston, Chicago, Dallas, Dayton, Detroit, Denver, Houston, Los Angeles, Minneapolis, New York, Philadelphia, San Francisco, Union (N.J.), Montreal and Toronto. www.carlsonmarketing.com


About Peppers & Rogers Group
Peppers & Rogers Group is a global management consulting firm recognized as the world's leading authority on customer-based business strategy. Founders Don Peppers and Martha Rogers, Ph.D. are the co-authors of the seminal publication on CRM, The One To One Future, and a series of business books that further develop the unique one-to-one methodology espoused by their firm. Through the leadership of president Steve Skinner, the firm has strengthened its unique methodology dedicated to helping enterprises leverage customer data to drive profits and build more valuable relationships. Peppers & Rogers Group helps clients identify differences within their customer base and use that knowledge to gain a measurable and sustainable competitive advantage. Led by 1to1® Magazine, Peppers & Rogers Group's independent media division extends its thought leadership and client experience to more than 250,000 readers weekly through an array of print and interactive publications.

Peppers & Rogers Group is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut, with a domestic and international network of nine offices. The firm maintains a global client list that includes AT&T Wireless, Bayer Corporation, Bentley Systems, BMW, Boise Office Solutions, DuPont, Ford Motor Company, Hewlett-Packard, Jaguar Cars, Lowe’s, Merial, Roche, Scottish Power, Telesp, The United States Postal Service, Verizon, Visa International, Volvo and Wolters Kluwer. www.1to1.com.