CAREERS MEDIA: Ex-JWT CEO Pereira joins Carlson as A-P president

Former J. Walter Thompson CEO and chairman for Southeast Asia Gerry Pereira has joined relationship marketing company Carlson Marketing Group as president for Asia-Pacific. Mr Pereira, an 18-year veteran of JWT, is based in Singapore where Carlson has a staff of 60, but will be spearheading a regional acquisition and recruitment campaign over the next 18 months aimed at planting the Carlson flag in most frontline Asian countries. Carlson will be targeting existing loyalty companies and Internet-driven loyalty companies, but in some cases will be looking at strategic hirings who can provide creative planning and account service which can be backed up by the Singapore HQ as the regional resource and excellence centre, according to Mr Pereira. Among the biggest accounts are the British Airways executive class loyalty programme worldwide, the Internet-driven loyalty programmes for Cisco Systems in 11 countries and relationship marketing for Citibank in Australia. Carlson is rated as the biggest relationship marketing company in the world in terms of revenue. Mr Pereira sees the biggest competitor in the region as Y&R's Impiric, but said the understanding of relationship marketing in Asia still has a long way to go and many clients tended to equate it with direct marketing. He said Carlson offered highly sophisticated database management on behalf of clients, or could interface with a client's database, offering the type of relationship programmes that brought loyalty and results. "In the early days, people wanted to be treated equally and that's what advertising is all about," said Mr Pereira. "Now people want to be treated as individuals." He said it was no longer about share of market, or share of wallet, but about share of loyalty.

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