Advantica Expands Executive Team and Names Robert Elsas Vice President of Marketing

CLEARWATER, Fla., Sept. 14, 2011 /PRNewswire/ -- Advantica is proud to announce the appointment of Robert Elsas as Vice President of Marketing. In this new role, Elsas will direct marketing and brand strategies, in addition to managing social media initiatives for Advantica's vision and dental business. Bob will report directly to Andy Davis, Senior Vice President, Sales & Marketing. "I am excited to be joining Advantica at this key moment in the company's expansion," said Elsas. "We have great opportunities in front of us to bring our high quality and customer-centric vision care and dental benefit plans to an ever-growing audience."

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Mr. Elsas is a 25 year veteran in the health care industry. Prior to joining Advantica, Bob was with Davis Vision for over 13 years as Vice President of Business Development and Public Relations. During his tenure, Davis Vision grew from 2 million members to over 55 million. Most recently, Bob served in the capacity of Director, Sales and Marketing for Classic Laboratories in Youngstown, Ohio, and he helped lead it to further prominence in the industry.

"Bob has both the marketing and management expertise to lead Advantica into the next phase of its development," stated Richard Sanchez, President of Advantica. "Bob is a proven leader in creating high-impact marketing initiatives that build significant awareness, capture market share and increase revenues," Richard added, "he is another strategic addition to our management team that will position us for continued growth as we further expand and diversify our product offerings."

Andy said, "Bob will focus on promoting our integrated dental and vision benefit program to our existing clients, broker network and the health plans we serve.  With his expertise and guidance and through our expansive and well-established networks of 16,000 eyecare providers and 117,000 dental health locations nationally, we hope to further enhance the broadcast of our message regarding the wellness benefits this coupled offering can achieve."

About Advantica

Advantica provides vision care services to nearly 3 million members through a variety of robust and flexible plans to commercial health plans, government sponsored health plans and employer groups. With the integration of dental plans, "SEE, SMILE, LIVE" has become the company's new tagline, as it better reflects Advantica's "niche" expertise within the specialty healthcare management services arena. Advantica prides itself on having the administrative flexibility to implement effective total wellness management programs, tailored to the needs of virtually any organization. The "AdvantiCare" wellness programs vary and are geared toward the management, detection and identification of medical conditions and diseases prior to them becoming major medical issues.  For more information on Advantica, please visit www.advanticabenefits.com.

SOURCE Advantica