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Covisint Awards Worldwide Marketing Campaign to Young & Rubicam Inc. Y&R Group Detroit Leads Global Team

30 October 2000

Covisint Awards Worldwide Marketing Campaign to Young & Rubicam Inc. Y&R Group Detroit Leads Global Team

    DETROIT, Oct. 30 Covisint, the global automotive business-
to-business exchange, today announced the award of its current worldwide
marketing campaign to Young & Rubicam Inc.  Led by Y&R Group Detroit, the
global agency team includes Landor & Associates, Y&R Advertising, The Media
Edge, and Impiric employees in Detroit, New York, San Francisco, London, and
Tokyo.
    The announcement comes on the day that Covisint's worldwide marketing
campaign breaks with global print and Internet advertising introducing
Covisint's brand identity.  The ads appear in business and trade publications
throughout the United States, Canada, the U.K., France, Germany and Japan and
on targeted automotive and financial web sites.
    "Covisint's worldwide marketing campaign is designed to introduce its
brand identity to auto manufacturers and suppliers across the globe," said
Alice Miles, Covisint Executive Planning Team and Ford Motor Company Lead.
"Y&R's strong expertise in managing brand-based, global, integrated marketing
campaigns is a great asset to us as we launch Covisint."
    Landor & Associates is responsible for developing Covisint's brand
identity and communications architecture.  Y&R Advertising, together with The
Media Edge, is charged with the advertising creative and media buy.  One-to-
one and interactive communications are handled by Impiric.
    "Our marketing campaign is designed to tell our customers and partners
about who we are and about our plans for a comprehensive and integrated
product offering focusing on product development, procurement, and supply
chain management," said Mick Koster, Covisint Marketing Lead.  "The look and
feel of our brand identity system will reflect Covisint's ingenuity and
flexibility."
    Covisint's brand outlines a place where people, products, information, and
services come together to transform the automotive industry.  To illustrate
its brand positioning, Covisint has created the Connector, a graphic element
that links images and ideas and communicates Covisint's role as a facilitator
and a powerful new medium for collaboration.
    Covisint will differentiate its brand by leveraging its rich expertise in
the automotive industry, its product breadth and depth, its enormous reach and
scale, and perhaps most importantly, its drive to create opportunity for the
industry through speed, efficiency and collaboration.  Covisint's tagline,
"Accelerating the Pace of Business," underscores this message.
    "Y&R is thrilled to be working with Covisint -- a company that is on the
leading edge of e-commerce and Internet marketing," said John Gillis, Chief
Operating Officer of Y&R Group Detroit.  "Our integrated, global marketing
expertise makes us well-suited for the challenge of helping to build and
promote the Covisint brand."
    Announced in February 2000, Covisint is an automotive e-business trading
exchange being formed by DaimlerChrysler, Ford Motor Company, General Motors,
and Renault/Nissan.  Covisint will provide original equipment manufacturers
(OEMs) and suppliers the ability to reduce costs in their respective supply
chains and bring efficiencies to their business operations.  Covisint's
temporary headquarters are in Southfield, Mich., and it expects to establish
offices in Europe and Asia.  For more information, go to http://www.covisint.com .
    Since being announced in February, a number of automotive suppliers have
publicly expressed their support for Covisint.  Those companies include: A.K.
Steel, ArvinMeritor, Autoliv, BASF, Collins & Aikman, Dana Corporation, Delphi
Automotive, Denso International America, Dura, Ernie Green Corporation,
Federal Mogul, Flex-n-Gate, Freudenberg NOK, Johnson Controls, Inc., Lear
Corporation, Magna International, Plastech, Tower Automotive, Visteon and
Yazaki International.
    Young & Rubicam Inc. is a world leader in commercial communications -
a network of preeminent companies in advertising, perception management and
public relations, brand identity and design consultancy, database marketing
and customer relationship management and health care communications.
Headquartered in New York, Young & Rubicam ranks among the world's leading
consolidated marketing communications companies, and is a member of the WPP
Group.