Taking on the Oscars: Aberdeen Group Announces the 2009 Marketing Achievement Award Nominees

BOSTON, MA--(Marketwire - August 13, 2009) - Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company HHS, announces the nominees for the 2009 Aberdeen Industry Achievement Awards in Marketing Excellence. This year's nominees hail from an extensive list of formidable players in the industry and each have an impressive marketing success story that led to their nomination.

Award nominees are derived from Aberdeen's research over the past 12 months, and Aberdeen has identified the following organizations as award nominees in the following 5 categories:

2009 CMO Achievement Awards (1) Excellence in Driving Customer Advocacy: Award criteria: Enterprise that has leveraged technology solutions to mobilize customers on behalf of the brand. Nominees: Plantronics and Symantec (2) Excellence in Marketing and Sales Alignment: Award criteria: Enterprise that has demonstrated superior marketing and sales alignment through the use of lead management and campaign reporting solutions Nominees: Aricent and Ingres (3) Excellence in Green Marketing: Award criteria: Enterprise that has leveraged technology solutions to reduce direct mail waste or overall environmental impact. Nominees: L.L. Bean, Wal-Mart and Target (4) Excellence in Listening to the Voice of the Customer: Award criteria: Enterprise that has leveraged social media monitoring or customer feedback technology solutions to improve customer insights. Nominees: Farmers Insurance, Carlson Wagonlit and SimplexGrinnell (5) Excellence in Building Online Customer Communities: Award criteria: Enterprise that has leveraged branded community platforms to drive customer interactions. Nominees: Motorola, Sony and Eastman Kodak Company

These esteemed organizations will be recognized at Aberdeen's 2009 Chief Marketing Officer (CMO) Summit in San Francisco, CA, September 9-10, 2009. The winners will be announced during an award ceremony on day one of the Summit. The CMO Summit is an annual two-day executive conference that brings together marketing leaders from around the globe to share insights, discuss strategies and engage with peers on the key challenges facing marketing organizations today.

"The CMO Summit showcases top executives who are deploying cutting edge technologies along with emerging strategies, business processes and performance metrics to not only increase revenues and cut costs in the near term, but also enhance their customer relationships on an ongoing basis," explains Jeff Zabin, Aberdeen Research Fellow and Summit host.

Supporting sponsors and partners include Harte-Hanks, Saepio, Zuberance, Fun & Joy at Work and the San Francisco Chapter of the American Marketing Association.

To review the full speaker roster for the Summit please visit http://summits.aberdeen.com/index.php/Chief-Marketing-Officer-Summit/2009-cmo-summit-speakers.html.

For more information on the event or to register to attend, please visit http://summits.aberdeen.com/index.php/Chief-Marketing-Officer-Summit/2009-cmo-summit-overview.html.

About Aberdeen Group, a Harte-Hanks Company

Aberdeen provides fact-based research and market intelligence that delivers demonstrable results. Having queried more than 30,000 companies in the past two years, Aberdeen is positioned to educate users to action: driving market awareness, creating demand, enabling sales, and delivering meaningful return-on-investment analysis. As the trusted advisor to the global technology markets, corporations turn to Aberdeen for insights that drive decisions.

As a Harte-Hanks Company, Aberdeen plays a key role of putting content in context for the global direct and targeted marketing company. Aberdeen's analytical and independent view of the "customer optimization" process of Harte-Hanks (Information - Opportunity - Insight - Engagement - Interaction) extends the client value and accentuates the strategic role Harte-Hanks brings to the market. For additional information, visit Aberdeen or call (617) 854-5200, or to learn more about Harte-Hanks, call (800) 456-9748.

© 2009 Aberdeen Group, Inc., a Harte-Hanks Company 451 D Street, Suite 710 Boston, Massachusetts 02210-1928 Telephone: (617) 854-5200 Fax: (617) 723-7897 www.aberdeen.com