Global Media Buyer Active International Taps Direct Response Vets Carol Jenss and Tom Turner to Enhance Firm's Service Offerings in Direct Response Category

PEARL RIVER, N.Y., Feb. 11 /PRNewswire/ -- Active International, the world's largest corporate trade organization, announced today that they have augmented their media buying organization with key, big-agency hires in response to the growing need for strategic, ROI-driven direct response services from clients and the media community alike.

In a strategic move designed to provide clients with additional media services that lead to fast, quantifiable results, Active successfully secured leading direct response veterans Carol Jenss and Tom Turner as Senior Vice President, Director of Strategic Services and Vice President, Broadcast Director respectively. Their express role: to offer Active's manifold clients more comprehensive direct response insights, trend analysis, buying power, and follow-through than ever before. To further its media buying capabilities, Active is building on its expertise by expanding its traditional brand and product advertising services to include ways to help clients connect with customers on a more meaningful, targeted and action-oriented basis. Active's primary goal is to maximize results and meet its clients' aggressive business goals.

Carol Jenss comes to Active from ID Media, where she served most recently as Senior Vice President, Director of Strategic Services; working with Blue Chip clients including American Express, on strategic initiatives ranging from DRTV to analytics. Her impressive career in Direct Response expands over two decades, and Carol possesses a broad range of category experience encompassing such areas as telecommunications, financial services, insurance, pharmaceuticals, and electronics. She brings a wealth of multi-media direct marketing knowledge to Active's clients, including deep DRTV expertise and strong measurement and accountability know-how. Carol chose to come to Active for the opportunity to work with the company's Fortune 500 clients and their agencies. According to Jenss, "Active's trading model creates greater buying power for clients during a time when many are experiencing sizable cuts to their marketing and ad budgets. Buying power that can be used for media that is not focused only on traditional brand and product advertising, but rather the solicitation of direct customer response and interactions that are highly-measurable and tied to specific business goals. Given the economic slump, what Active offers by way of targeted, high-quality media, funded in part by trade credit usage, has never been more relevant. Helping them build out this practice, now, was too good an opportunity to pass up."

Thomas Turner comes to Active after working as Media Director for Halogen Response Media. There he managed over $60MM in annual billings for a client roster that included automotive, financial, healthcare, travel, consumer products and telecommunications. Tom's area of expertise is evaluating, assessing and recommending the most effective media buying strategies to achieve client objectives—making him an ideal complement to Active's existing media buying organization.

"As Active strives to meet the ever-changing needs of our clients, you will begin to see more exciting additions to our media buying team and the scope of our media services. Our global media buying organization keeps its ear to the ground to ensure that we grow and change as client needs and media options evolve. Direct Response Media, although not new, is certainly an area our clients are focusing on more and more. Our business model is flexible enough to reflect our clients' emergent areas of focus. This allows us to deliver consistent, strategic results regardless of the need, platform, month, day, hour or year," says Alan Brown, Active's Executive Vice President, Worldwide Media

About Active International

Originally founded as a corporate trading company more than 25 years ago, Active International acquires underperforming assets, such as inventory, real estate and capital equipment, helping its clients use these assets to fund normal business expenditures and create cash savings and economic benefits that otherwise would not have been achieved.

Today, we continue to acquire assets, but we have evolved into a diversified marketing and business solutions provider. The marketplace relationships we've developed through our corporate trading model enables us to deliver customized solutions that directly impact our clients marketing and business goals.

Active is headquartered in Pearl River, New York, with global operations in 11 countries, and places more than $1.1 billion in global media annually.

SOURCE Active International