[October 28, 2014]

Superstore Fred Meyer Wins Vision Critical's North American Insight Community of the Year Award for Extraordinary Customer Intelligence

Vision Critical, the leading customer intelligence platform provider, has named Fred Meyer Vision Critical's North American Insight Community of the Year (ICOTY) award winner for its use of its cloud-based customer insight community. Awarded at the annual Vision Critical NY Summit in New York City on Thursday, October 9, 2014, Fred Meyer was selected by over 250 event attendees and recognized for its ability to engage customers to help the company maintain a competitive edge, keep up with industry trends, impact decisions such as store design and product offerings, as well as solve key challenges across all sectors of the business.

Vision Critical NY Summit attendees selected Fred Meyer for its FMconnect community from a group of three strong finalists, including ESPN Latin America for ESPN Fan Forum and Warner Bros. Entertainment for the WB A-List Community. Vision Critical also honored winners from EMEA and APAC in its annual awards. UK-based Exterion Media won the EMEA award for its work.shop.play. community, which helped drive millions in revenue to the business. In APAC, the Australian Football League (AFL) was recognized for its AFL Fan Focus community, which effectively engaged fans to bring them closer to the game.

"As empowered customers continue to influence the decisions businesses are making, Fred Meyer has done a remarkable job of engaging its customers through its insight community to better understand their preferences in order to improve the shopping experience," said Scott Miller (News - Alert), group CEO of Vision Critical. "I also want to thank strong finalists ESPN Latin America and Warner Bros. Entertainment for inspiring the event's 250 attendees with their customer stories of how they gained deeper insight into the viewership and media consumption habits of their viewers during an evolutionary time in the media landscape. Finally, I want to offer special recognition to our EMEA and APAC ICOTY winners Exterion Media and the AFL for their use of customer intelligence to drive revenue growth."

Fred Meyer Awarded for FMconnect's Role in Driving Improvements Across the Business

Owned by parent company Kroger and headquartered in Portland, Oregon, Fred Meyer is a superstore chain with millions of customers across Oregon, Washington, Idaho and Alaska. In 2012, Fred Meyer launched FMconnect, a secure and engaged online community of over 15,000 customers, to interact with and learn about its customers. Since then, FMconnect has been crucial in helping fuel decisions concerning store design, merchandising, marketing, products and services throughout the company.

To stay ahead of competition and be aware of shifting preferences, Fred Meyer continuously turns to FMconnect to make strategic business decisions. Most recently, the retailer made merchandising adjustments to its garden center based on feedback from FMconnect and as a result, saw a 10 percent increase in customer ratings. Fred Meyer has also been able to successfully navigate marketing messages surrounding competition based on insight from FMconnect community members.

"Built on Vision Critical's customer intelligence platform, the Fred Meyer FMconnect community is a fast, efficient and innovative way for us to gain actionable insight from our customers. The customer feedback we receive through FMconnect spans the business and enables us to be one step ahead of other retailers," said Jeffery Temple, director of customer insights marketing and merchandising at Fred Meyer. "Through FMconnect we bring our customers into our decisions, resulting in real business profit-there is no other technology as powerful."

ESPN (News - Alert) Latin America, Warner Bros. Entertainment Named North American Finalists

ESPN Latin America in an ESPN channel that broadcasts in Latin America and Brazil (in Portuguese). In 2010, ESPN Latin America launched the multilingual ESPN Fan Forum, a community of 13,000 fans to better understand its audiences. Using its insight community, ESPN Latin America has been able to dig beyond ratings and learn more about audience motivations as fans move to consume sports media across all platforms including online, mobile, broadband, magazine and traditional TV. ESPN Latin America has also been able to understand how fans interact with social media, consume sports programming and most importantly, understand audience perceptions and attitudes leading up to the 2014 FIFA World Cup. The results helped secure better partnerships with media agencies and sponsors.

Based in Burbank, California, Warner Bros. Entertainment is a multi-billion dollar producer of film, television and game entertainment. To quickly gain viewer feedback and develop a stronger connection with its audiences, Warner Bros. launched the WB A-List Community in 2012. The WB A-List Community now spans across five countries including the US, Canada, the UK, Australia and Japan totaling about 20,000 members. Through its WB A-List Community, Warner Bros. has a clearer view into the changing dynamics of consumer behavior and is able to adjust its value proposition based on the needs of its empowered consumers.

work.shop.play. Honored as the EMEA ICOTY Winner for Driving Millions in Revenue

Exterion Media is the leading out-of-home media owner in the UK, allowing advertisers to reach the UK urban audience. In 2012, Exterion Media created work.shop.play., a community of more than 10,000 customers, to better understand its audience and what content resonates best.

Since its launch, work.shop.play. has been responsible for driving six million pounds in revenue for the out-of-home media owner. The success of the Exterion Media insight community has also elevated the role of customer intelligence within the company.

The AFL Fan Focus Wins the APAC ICOTY for Improving Fan Engagement

With millions of spectators and 18 teams, the AFL is the highest-level professional competition in Australian football. To better attract new and diverse fans, as well as maintain existing ones, the AFL created the AFL Fan Focus in March 2013.

Since then, its 12,000 members have been critical in influencing many marketing and fan entertainment decisions. The AFL Fan Focus has also impacted major changes to the sport, including a shorter pre-season competition and an earlier premiership season. The AFL Fan Focus helps the AFL build a relationship with its fans and consequently, fans are more engaged and feel closer to the game.

About Vision Critical

Vision Critical provides a cloud-based customer intelligence platform that allows companies to build engaged, secure communities of customers they can use continuously, across the enterprise, for ongoing, real-time feedback and insight. Designed for today's always-on, social and mobile savvy customer, Vision Critical's technology helps large, customer-centric enterprises discover what their customers want so they can deliver what they need. Unlike traditional customer research, which is slow, expensive and gathers dust on a shelf, Vision Critical's customer intelligence platform replaces static data and cumbersome reports with real-time actionable customer intelligence that companies need to build better products, deliver better services and achieve better business outcomes.

Hundreds of high-performance organizations use Vision Critical's technology, including Banana Republic, Time Inc. (News - Alert) and Discovery Communications. Learn more at www.visioncritical.com or follow us on Twitter (News - Alert) at https://twitter.com/visioncritical.

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