Richard Birt, Direct Marketing Pioneer, Joins Echelon Marketing Group
Friday, 13 October 2006
Echelon Marketing Group announced that it has hired Richard Birt as senior vice president of new business development. Birt will play a pivotal role in helping Echelon Marketing Group further strengthen its position as a recognized leader in providing marketing information and insight to the world’s best brands.
“The addition of Richard Birt to Echelon Marketing Group is a big win for our business, our clients, and those organizations that we will serve as future clients,” said Don Neal, Echelon Marketing Group president. “Richard’s solutions-oriented approach to helping clients solve their most complex marketing issues and build their businesses is second to none. We’re delighted that he chose to join Echelon.”
For the last 25-plus years, Birt has created marketing wins for more than 150 clients including such notables as American Honda, Bank of America, Bose Electronics, Dell Computer, Hewlett-Packard, General Motors, Microsoft, NTT, News Corp., Nissan, Nike, Samsung, and Toyota.
He has worked with leading database marketing vendors including TRW (now Experian), Foote Cone & Belding, Acxiom, Siebel Systems (now Oracle), and SAS Institute. He also owned two consulting agencies -- Rogue, and Fast Forward Events.
Birt is recognized by the direct marketing community at large as a pioneer in direct and interactive advertising. His career includes many industry firsts including his involvement in the creation of the FICO Score as well as his contributions to acquisition/response, retention, and cross-selling models and the introduction of credit card attrition, loan attrition, and sub-prime lending modeling.
ECHO Award Winner
In 1989, Birt was honored with the first Direct Marketing Association (DMA) Gold ECHO Award, the highest industry award granted by the DMA, for his work with Apple Computer. He earned his second Gold ECHO in 1998 with client 3Com.
Birt is a seasoned speaker and contributor to industry trade publications. He holds an MBA from the Peter Drucker School of Management at Claremont Graduate University.