1978 - 1982: Diners Club Benelux N.V.
Marketing Manager, Manager Card Services & Publisher of Magazine "Signature"
Because of my international career and background in international
marketing & business economics I was approached by a headhunter to become
the new Marketing Manager at Diners Club Benelux NV: a promising credit card business.
As an international
business traveller I already used credit cards abroad, such as Diners Card and
American Express Card.
In Brussels the founder
and `président-directeur-général` of Diners Club Benelux NV, monsieur
Philippe Kinet, assisted by his `directeur-général` monsieur Willy
Grandjean, offered me a job I could not refuse: to become -at the age
of 28 - the successor of mr. Pierre Jonckheer (52 years), who had been the face of Diners Club in the Netherlands for many years. I accepted this
challenging job and became `Mr. Diners` (as I was called) in Holland.
Within a 4 years` period I could double the number of Diners Club
members from 25.000 to 50.000; the card turn over increased from Dfl.
80.000.000 to Dfl. 170.000.000.
A life time experience...
It gave me huge opportunities as well to increase my knowledge and experiences with :
- marketing of financial services
- direct marketing (several publications and many lectures)
- sports marketing communications (several publications and many lectures)
- sponsoring activities (KLM Open Golf in particular)
- sales promotion (I became chairman of SPIN and president of EFSP)
- joint promotions
- private label card services (with Budget-Rent-A-Car, Alfa Romeo & Bijenkorf in particular)
- member-get-member activities
- take-one campaigns with dedicated strategic partners like Alliance Gastronomique Néerlandaise
- in flight shopping (with KLM)
- co-op advertising (with Parker Pen, Society Shop, Arrow Shirts in particular)*
- publishing magazines ("Signature")
- publishing books ("Lekker Eten in Nederland" with Wina Born)
- publishing newsletters
- hedonic lifestyle
As `Mr. Diners` I became a dedicated member of a multi company task force with four initiating companies involved (and committed !) such as:
- Society Shop (Ed Beer & Oger Lusink); now wellknown with `Oger` stores)
- Arrow Shirts (Hans Muller)
- Parker Pen Benelux B.V. (Walter Woudenberg)
- Diners Club Benelux N.V. (Cor Denneman)
The marketing idea behind this brand (!) new marketing communication concept -later on called co-op advertising- has been created and built by Lex de Rooi and me. The famous marketing communication author Hans Ferrée called this in several publications `een briljant voorbeeld van zogenoemde sam-sam promoties`.
The idea of Lex de Rooi and me was -as we thought- bloody simple:
- looking for branch different but target group equal companies
- putting -in this case- four equal marketing communication budgets together
- building substantial financial critical mass
- increasing purchase power towards different advertising media
- creating maximum exposure in the media focusing on our mutual target groups
- looking for alternative & flanking activities
- increasing store traffic in different distribution networks
- searching for additional and synergetic effects
Nowadays Diners Club is a part of Citigroup...