Zmags Forms Two Advisory Boards of Print & Online Execs
CHICAGO, Ill. – Sept. 15, 2009 – From the PRINT 09 conference, Zmags, which helps marketers engage customers through Interactive Collateral Management (ICM), announced that it has launched two new advisory boards intended to help the company gauge customer needs and maintain its edge in the digital collateral creation space. Zmags hosted the first formal meetings of its Advisory and Thought Leadership Boards in Boston earlier in September.
Zmags' Advisory Board combines professionals from the print and online worlds to help foster discussion about market challenges and trends, and to determine what marketers, publishers and businesses need as they examine how best to combine traditional print and newer digital venues.
Best-selling business author Billy Glynn is a participant on the Zmags Advisory Board. "Marketers have really struggled with how best to integrate what have traditionally been very separate offline and online marketing initiatives,” said Glynn. "Zmags' Interactive Collateral Management platform really helps bring everything together in a cohesive way. I did a lot of research before agreeing to join this board, and really got excited about what Zmags is doing. I'm looking forward to working with Zmags and the other Advisory Board members to help bring this new category forward.”
Zmags' Advisory Board participants include:
- Mikel Chertudi, VP, Omniture
- Jeff Cox, CEO, ARS Group
- Mark Dye, SVP of Business Development, Bizo
- Billy Glynn, Founder of CollectiveIQ and author of Left on Red
- Elizabeth Gooding, CEO of InsightForums
- Bernie Gracy, VP Strategy and Business Development, Pitney Bowes
- Skip Henk, CEO, XPLOR
- Jeanne Hopkins, Formerly of MarketingSherpa
- Peter Krainik, Founder, The CMO Club
- Barbara Pellow, Director, InfoTrends
- Andy Plata, CEO, OutputLinks
- Julie Plata, CAO, OutputLinks
Jeffrey Cohen, Chief Marketing Officer for Zmags, will chair the Advisory Board. "I'm looking forward to working with this accomplished group of professionals who will lend their extensive knowledge and experience to help continue Zmags' extraordinary and dynamic evolution of digital collateral,” noted Cohen. "Now a recognized category of marketing applications, ICM will impact the future of online marketing specifically savings, distribution, readership, revenue, analytics and more.”
In addition to Zmags' Advisory Board, the company has also formed a Thought Leadership Board comprised of respected publishers, executives and pundits from across the media spectrum. The group's mission is to help Zmags establish, shape and grow the ICM category across key verticals. Participants on the Thought Leadership Board include:
- Ken Eller, CEO, Active Data Services
- Scott Gerschwer, OutputLinks
- Bill Kitchen, CEO, eCom Partners
- Pat McGrew, Evangelist, Kodak
- Paul Miller, Editor-in-Chief, All About ROI (formerly Catalog Success) and Editorial Director, eM+C
- Luke Ryan, New Media Manager, NBC WHDH-TV
- Marcos Baer, Publisher, Portada
"ICM fills a strategic void for marketers. Everyone is talking about creating a better online experience for customers, but most marketers don't know where to start,” said Gerschwer. "ICM provides not only enabling technology, but also a strategy and platform. I'm excited about this emerging category of solutions and looking forward to working with Zmags and the other members of the Thought Leadership Board to help further define it.”
Zmags' Founder and CEO, Jens Karstoft, commented, "This is an impressive collective of influencers in the print and interactive media space – their input will be absolutely crucial as we look to propagate ICM to a wider audience. The discussions we've had with board members thus far have already stimulated some great new ideas and activities.”
Zmags' ICM solution provides a means to digitize and deliver interactive documents to customers, and then measure reading behavior. A fully self-service solution, Zmags can be used to share any type of collateral online – including brochures, catalogs, magazines, direct mail and other business documents – to help marketers lower production costs, increase reach and generate more revenue. Zmags can also be linked directly to e-commerce systems to make it easier for readers to make purchases. Zmags customers span multiple verticals – retail, manufacturing, travel, healthcare, financial services, agencies and publishers – and include companies such as 3M, IKEA, Microsoft and Volkswagen.
About Zmags
Zmags provides the first Interactive Collateral Management (ICM) solution designed to help marketers digitize all types of collateral, enrich them with interactive features, deliver them to customers, and then measure reading behavior. The net results are a better customer experience, lower costs, less print waste, increased reach and higher revenue. More than 2,500 companies in 50 countries currently use Zmags solutions to create, manage and optimize their digital collateral. Visit www.zmags.com.
