Business Services Industry
Comdata® Enters into Strategic Alliance with Serious to Provide DVD Gift Cards
Business Wire, Nov 7, 2007
New Personalized Marketing Mechanism Provides an Alternative Way to Reach Consumers
BRENTWOOD, Tenn. -- Comdata([R]) Stored Value Solutions, Inc., a wholly owned subsidiary of Comdata Corporation, today announced a strategic alliance with Serious to offer DVD gift cards, allowing retailers to further personalize their gift cards and offer more value to their customers.
The DVD gift cards will provide interactive multimedia content, such as music downloads, movie clips, product descriptions, educational information, catalogs, games, and more. The cards work like traditional gift cards, with payment magnetic stripes on one side and DVD content housed on the flip side.
"The Comdata-Serious alliance will create a higher standard of personalization and interactivity in the gift card market," said Bob Skiba, executive vice president and general manager of Comdata Stored Value Solutions. "By making gift cards interactive, retailers can now truly give their customers a gift within a gift."
By housing DVDs on gift cards, users can now have an immediate experience upon receipt. Once a DVD gift card is received, the consumer can insert the gift card into a DVD player to review content. If items such as coupons are included on a DVD, users can redeem them immediately online.
"The benefits to retailers are tremendous," said Skiba. "Retailers can now drive more traffic to their Web sites as well as hold a captive target audience - consumers who have proactively decided to view a predetermined sales pitch via a DVD gift card."
"This is gift cards on steroids," said Skiba. "DVD gift cards are a natural fit for retailers that do a significant amount of catalog and online business. Putting an entire catalog on a gift card to replace print versions can significantly reduce a retailer's overhead."
"We are delighted to partner with Comdata since they are a processor who has been strongly advocating the need for innovation in the marketplace," said David J Brown, CEO, Serious USA Inc. "Comdata's alignment with Serious underscores the commitment to introduce these innovations into the marketplace, providing more choice for customers."
"The functionality of the DVD gift card provides the ultimate integration of media, product and sales strategies, as well as creative differentiation to help retailers gain market share, quicker conversion of the cash to a sale and leveraged value to their core business," said Brown.
This new product will be available to all existing Comdata customers, both domestically and internationally.
About Comdata Corporation
Comdata([R]) Corporation is redefining the movement of money and information through innovative payment solutions. Comdata provides custom solutions for a wide range of industries such as transportation, retail, government services, aviation, construction, service businesses, restaurants and hospitality. Innovative electronic payment solutions range from credit and debit cards, gift and loyalty cards, fleet, fuel, payroll, purchasing and T&E. As a full-service merchant processor, Comdata's platforms support both its proprietary and branded card networks, as well as card processing for all card types. Headquartered in Brentwood, Tennessee, Comdata employs more than 1,600 people worldwide. Comdata is a wholly owned subsidiary of Minneapolis-based Ceridian Corporation (NYSE: CEN). www.comdata.com
About Ceridian
Ceridian Corporation is a business services company that helps its customers maximize the power of their people, lower their costs and focus on what they do best. The Company serves businesses and employees in the United States, Canada and Europe. Ceridian is one of the top human resources outsourcing companies in each of its markets, and offers a broad range of human resource services, including payroll, benefits administration, tax compliance, HR information systems and Employee Assistance Program (EAP) and work-life solutions. Through its Comdata subsidiary, Ceridian is a major payment processor and issuer of credit cards, debit cards and stored value cards, primarily for the trucking and retail industries in the United States. www.ceridian.com
About Serious
Serious is an award-winning, privately held digital publisher and marketer with offices in New York, London and Singapore. Its portfolio of intellectual property includes over 100 optical card patents in 60 countries. Applications of its proprietary technology include interactive gift cards, loyalty cards, pharmaceutical patient education cards, direct mail programs and collectible digital trading cards.
Serious' clients include; BBC Worldwide, Best Buy, Indianapolis Motor Speedway, Disney, Electronic Arts, Virgin, Circuit City, five of the top 10 US pharmaceutical companies, Sony Pictures, New Line Cinema, Manchester United, Estee Lauder, Home Depot, Warner Brothers, The Lance Armstrong Foundation, Tissot and ESPN. Serious was a recent winner of a Promo Interactive Marketing Award 2007, took 3rd place in the MAA International Globes 2007, and was a finalist in the Promo Awards, The Y Design Awards, the Connect Awards and the Sport Industry Awards 2007. It has recently been nominated for a Creative Media Award and Fresh Digital Award. Official site: www.serious.com
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