December 17, 2003, Trevose, PA – Advertising Specialty Institute (ASI) today announced the appointment of Deb Crine to Vice President of Customer Service. Crine, an experienced customer service executive, will focus her immediate attention on integrating customer service activities and answering client questions on the spot.

Senior Vice President Vince Bucolo, believes Crine's ideas mesh perfectly with ASI's desire to deliver extraordinary customer service. "I was looking for someone who has 'been there and done that' and Deb has experience creating an organization from the ground up," Bucolo said. "I'm impressed with both her overall knowledge and her caring nature. She understands the business aspect of customer service as well as the common-sense side."

ASI President Timothy M. Andrews added, "This is a newly-created position to put ASI in a position to achieve a world-class customer service organization. Our aim is to create an organization every supplier and distributor will want to emulate."

Crine joins ASI from a corporate-service position at Primedia in New York City, where she was responsible for desktop customer service for 7,000 employees in over 200 locations. She also managed and trained her distribution team while measuring performance and negotiating contract terms.

Prior to that, Crine built a customer-service help desk and managed the internet Web site at Intertec Publishing, addressing incoming customer product questions and resolving billing and shipping issues. She began her career at Dow Jones as a customer-service rep and was quickly promoted to director of customer support for clients in 40 countries with products in 12 languages.

Advertising Specialty Institute (ASI) is the single-largest trade information center for the promotional products industry, with a membership of 20,000 Distributors (sellers) and Suppliers (manufacturers) of promotional products. Suppliers use ASI print and electronic resources to promote their products to more than 17,000 ASI Distributors. Distributors use ASI print and electronic resources, which contain more than 650,000 promotional products, to locate Supplier products and to promote their services to buyers of promotional products. ASI was founded in 1950 and employs a staff of 500. The company offers catalogs, informational directories, newsletters, magazines, Web sites and databases, and provides a variety of interactive business, marketing and selling tools.

Contact

Dawn Marie,
Executive director of corporate communications

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