Leading Australian Retail Brand Health (RBH) specialist, The
Marketing Department (TMD) has joined with US based global retail marketing
services giant Crossmark to form Crossmark Asia Pacific.

The partnership creates Australasia’s largest retail marketing
service company with a turnover of $45million, 2,000 retail marketing staff
representing over 200 manufacturer and retailer clients within all key retail
channels in Australia and New Zealand.

Crossmark is the largest supplier of field services to Wal-Mart and
Home Depot, the world’s first and second largest retailers respectively. Other
clients include major players in consumer goods, Nestlé, Kraft, General Mills,
L’Oreal, and Johnson & Johnson.

TMD has been a leading player in the Australian and New Zealand
outsourced retail marketing services sector for 23 years, servicing clients
including BigPond, Intel, Paramount, HP, Countrywide Food Services and Sony
with its specialisation in Retail Brand Health.

Crossmark Asia Pacific represents a valuable opportunity for
the companies to grow their range of retail marketing services and offer
additional expertise to their clients across all retail categories.

“The Marketing Department have been actively seeking a partner in
the US marketplace to ensure our continued growth and competitiveness,”
Crossmark Asia Pacific CEO Kevin Moore said.

“To be serious in the Australian/New Zealand retail environment, you
must understand the North American markets. They are the world leaders in
retail. We now have access to this enormous market and can draw information,
and give a depth of expertise and resources to our clients in a way that no other
Australian Retail Marketing Company can provide,” he said.

TMD’s proprietary research tool, Retail Brand Health (RBH), and
proprietary field reporting tool TMD Storetrack will be adopted throughout Crossmark
globally, augmenting their successful specialist grocery reporting tool
SalesTrak. Retail Brand Health measures a brand’s effectiveness against its
competitors, using consumers experiences in store. 

Moore insists that the combining of TMD and Crossmark takes place at
a critical time in the Australian retail marketing services industry, with the business
sector at a tipping point, comparing the impact of outsourcing of call centres
from 10 years ago to the current retail marketing services situation.