July 5, 2006

Savannah, GA – James D. Battin, former director of development and marketing at the Telfair Museum of Art and a career copywriter and advertising executive, today announced the opening of Battin Corporate and Consumer Communications LLC (B|3|C) in Savannah.

The firm, specializing in communications strategy, copywriting and marketing project management, leverages Battin’s many years of advertising agency and corporate marketing experience to benefit businesses and brands of all sizes.

Battin has served as both an account manager and copywriter/creative director at leading New York City agencies including Marsteller, Doremus, N.W. Ayer, Grey Direct, and Partners & Shevack, and been a marketing programs manager at General Electric Capital in Stamford, CT, and executive VP of advertising and marketing at Encyclopaedia Britannica in Chicago.

He has extensive experience with consumer and business products and services, aviation/aerospace, financial services, and fundraising on brands that include Haagen-Dazs, Visine, Scotts lawn care, GE, the National Geographic Society, Falcon and Piper airplanes, Sikorsky helicopters, KLM, Lexis-Nexis, Dreyfus mutual funds, and many others.

Battin founded a direct response business in 1994 for Partners & Shevack Advertising, a $400-million agency in New York, managing and serving as its creative director for more than six years. While there, a customer loyalty program he created and wrote for Haagen-Dazs ice cream was selected as a case study in the seminal book Permission Marketing, by Seth Godin (Simon & Schuster, 1999).

At Britannica, he managed a $30-million annual budget producing 1-million leads for the company’s 2,500 independent contractor sales representatives.

While at Grey Direct his $14-million opt-in/out program for New York Telephone generated in excess of 90% positive response, saving the company more than $300-million in annual revenue.

For early 2006 Battin created the international marketing program that launched the Telfair’s dramatic new Jepson Center for the Arts, a $30-million expansion by the oldest public art museum in the South.

He is a speaker and writer on marketing topics, a published travel photographer, a private pilot, and does voice-overs.