We wanted you, our faithful AEV blog readers, to be among the first to know about our planned announcement of the acquisition of Wabash and Lake this morning at the 2009 WOMMA Summit.
Who is Wabash and Lake? Well, you may not know the company name, but we’re almost certain you know its principals, Ben McConnell & Jackie Huba. Ben and Jackie have been recognized as two of the web’s most influential marketers with over 120,000 daily readers of their Church of the Customer blog and bestselling Word of Mouth Marketing books, Citizen Marketers and Creating Customer Evangelists. Both Ben and Jackie have had significant impact on our thinking about customer evangelism over the years and we are thrilled to be adding two of the world’s foremost experts in building word of mouth and customer loyalty programs in our first year of business. We can honestly say we now have one of the industry’s strongest lineups of proven social media and customer experience practitioners who have led customer-focused changes at large brands.
Forbes has described their work as “the word of mouth gospel” and we couldn’t agree more. Which is why we are so very honored to be expanding Ant’s Eye View with their industry expertise in word of mouth marketing, digital strategy, customer evangelism and social media. While Ben and Jackie’s initial focus will be the creation of programs and services that help companies improve the customer experience and create customer evangelists, they will also serve as public representatives of Ant’s Eye View in their work as business bloggers and keynote speakers, as well as consulting with existing and prospective clients.
But here’s the best news: To celebrate, we’re hosting a party. We’re buying the drinks!
If you are attending the WOMMA 2009 Summit in Las Vegas this week, please come celebrate with Ben, Jackie, and the Ant’s Eye View team this Wednesday, Nov 18th at 7:30p inside the Paris Hotel as we take over the Risque Lounge to serve the world’s newest and most impressive cocktail: The Antini.
We look forward to working side by side with both Jackie & Ben. And as any good citizen marketer would encourage, please feel free to share, forward, tweet, blog, etc… by all means, talk about this exciting moment in time! We deeply appreciate your continued support in all that we do and hope you’ll give a warm welcome to Ben & Jackie either here on the AEV blog or at any of Ben & Jackie’s calling cards:
Twitter: @jackiehuba & @benmcconnell
Church of the Customer blog
Welcome to the Anthill, Ben and Jackie!