Industry Pioneers George Wiedemann and Kenneth Lomasney Form New Marketing Services Holding Company
Wednesday, 13 June 2007
Two advertising industry pioneers, George Wiedemann, founder of Grey Direct, and Kenneth Lomasney, founder of Market Knowledge, Inc., have joined forces to personally invest in and form Wiedemann & Lomasney (W&L), a marketing services holding company.
“Marketing executives and advertising professionals are wrestling with the breakdown of the mass market, and we want to help clients deal with those changes by embracing a new model of marketing services offering for this century,” said George Wiedemann, chairman & CEO of W&L.
“The task is to re-approach marketing communications organized around focus on customers and prospects and how they want to interact with brands as opposed to a mainly product/channel/outbound approach,” Wiedemann said. “Since more strategies are information-based, the challenge is also to bring together the data/analytics/metrics side of the business with the creative engagement side in a way that drives accountable revenues. We want to help clients embrace customer centricity.
“After a collective half century of leadership experience in direct, digital and database marketing, we’ve decided that the time has come to offer 21st century marketing services,” stated Ken Lomasney, president of W&L. “We have the luxury of building a marketing services firm nearly from scratch where all of our disciplines equitably work together. We are delighted to be able to create and establish a services business that starts with the right approach.”
“We have worked together for 15 years, and we have long had a strong desire to formulate truly integrated, information-driven communication and creative strategies that deliver value for clients,” Wiedemann added.
W&L has the mission to create a customer-centric marketing services firm over the next 10 years. The acquisition strategy focuses on this longer term, with plans to join complementary service companies into a unified, new model enterprise. Immediate plans are to announce the first investment before the end of June.
George Wiedemann Biography
Wiedemann began his career in 1968 at Time Magazine as the youngest circulation marketing director in the history of the magazine. In 1976 he became president of Claritas, collaborating with founder Dr. Jonathan Robbin to develop the demographic overlay technologies still used today in database marketing. Wiedemann prepared Claritas for sale to VNU, the present-day owner of the company.
In 1978, Wiedemann joined Wunderman, a Y&R agency, as director of client services. By 1980, Ed Meyer, CEO of Grey Advertising, invited Wiedemann to found Grey Direct, which he led for 21 years. Grey Direct, now G2 Direct and Digital of Grey Global Group, part of WPP, became a global direct response advertising agency with over $1 billion in billings in a network of 38 profitable companies. Grey Direct served Chase credit cards, IBM, Microsoft, Oracle, Bertelsmann Music Clubs, Shearson, Nokia, Glaxo Pharmaceuticals, and many other blue chip brands during his leadership.
In 2000, Wiedemann became president and CEO of Responsys, a leading commercial email company. Responsys’ blue chip customers included Lands’ End, Continental Airlines, Office Depot, Merrill Lynch and Wells Fargo Bank, among many others.
In 1998, Wiedemann became a member of the Board of Directors of Rewards Network and was offered the position of CEO in 2002. After three years, he returned to the east coast to join Harte-Hanks as managing director of Harte-Hanks Partners, a strategic engagement arm of Harte-Hanks. Today, he is co-founder, chairman and CEO of Wiedemann & Lomasney.
Wiedemann served on the Board of Directors of the Direct Marketing Association for fifteen years and was Chairman of the Board in 1999/2000.
Kenneth P. Lomasney Biography
Lomasney began his career as the Chicago branch manager for the Profiles Division of Comshare, Inc., the developer of management planning and control application software for the finance and human resource functions across a broad range of industries.
In 1984 Lomasney founded Market Knowledge Inc. which grew into one of the dominant providers of database marketing and analysis services to major companies throughout the world. Market Knowledge was sold to Equifax Information Services in 1996.
In 1998 Lomasney was an executive at Grey Global Group, New York, where he founded its consulting division and served as president, Worldwide, MDS Global Consulting, now known as G2 Knowledge Consulting. During his tenure, MDS grew at an annual rate in excess of 25% with net revenues of over $24MM. Grey/MDS has full service operations in North America, Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America. (www.mdsgc.com)
In 2005, Lomasney founded the Fury Group (www.furygrp.com), a marketing consultancy and analytic services firm supporting the needs of Fortune 100 clients. Today he is the co-founder and President of Wiedemann & Lomasney.