Euro RSCG North America has realigned its holdings, placing American Student List within its loyalty and database group, Euro RSCG Discovery.
The partnership is intended to provide clients of both American Student List and Discovery with a more targeted, strategic approach to reaching young consumers and their families.
“Discovery is about helping brands make their brand promises personal, and the ability to reach students — who are a very influential group of consumers — is one more way to help our clients,” said Zain Raj, CEO of the Euro RSCG Discovery group. “Discovery has the ability to offer capabilities that are strategic to American Student List, and the list allows us to target the youth market, so it’s a perfect fit.
“We’ve discovered that not a lot of clients have been familiar with the fact that they can specifically target students and teens and kids on a one-on-one basis with relevant communications and relevant offers,” Raj added. “By creating this alignment, we are bringing the ability for each client to target kids and teens directly.”
American Student List is a data company specializing in student and youth marketing. Some examples of its proprietary lists are those of high school students, college bound high school students and teen lifestyle interests. Together, the two companies will be able to offer CRM and loyalty programs, data processing and analytics, creative, Web site design, communications, prospecting and database enhancements, among other services.
“Discovery can actually build programs against the [youth] segment,” Raj pointed out. “American Student List doesn’t have the capabilities to build a program, but Discovery can build relationship marketing programs. Also, Discovery is a global company, so we can provide a distribution platform that gives a large footprint across a variety of verticals.”
No clients for the combined businesses have yet been named, but Raj said that the partnership is expected to help Discovery expand its footprint in the consumer electronics, consumer packaged goods and retail sectors, which are popular with young consumers. Electronics and retail clients on the Euro RSCG Discovery roster include Sprint, IBM and Circuit City.
Raj, formerly CEO of Discovery, will take the helm as CEO of the consolidated Discovery group. Don Damore, CEO of American Student List, will hold his position there while also taking on the role of COO of the Discovery group in North America.
