“New” larger Academica Group brings Full Cycle Marketing™ to higher education.

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE:
Toronto & London, Ontario | September 25, 2007

With a 12-year track record, Academica Group Inc. has long been the North American leader in education-sector quantitative consumer research. In the past three years, Academica Group has grown tenfold, and expanded to become the only provider of full-cycle research, marketing and web technology focused exclusively on the higher education sector. Academica Group’s recent acquisition of Toronto-based x2idea Corporation, a leading web development and creative services company, greatly enhances the company’s product and service offerings.

“This was not simply an acquisition for growth’s sake,” explains Academica CEO Rod Skinkle.
“Academica Group has been successful because universities, colleges, and government policy makers agree that research evidence is essential for data-driven strategic decisions. As the student audience is now universally online, the future of education research and marketing hinges on real-time web analytics, which closes the loop in what we call Full-Cycle Marketing™.”

In 2005, Academica Group augmented its market research expertise by acquiring an award-winning regional marketing agency, with similar experience and passion for the education sector. In 2006, it launched Academica’s Top Ten, a free daily news brief summarizing Canadian higher education news for more than a thousand subscribers coast to coast.

Today, Academica Group launched its new brand identity (better reflecting the company’s focus on today’s youth, emerging technologies, and the dynamic landscape of higher education), and its new website, www.academicagroup.com built using Academica’s own x2clicks™ platform, based on the Drupal open source technology.

Originally founded in 1995 as Acumen Research Group, the company pioneered the application of consumer research to higher education policy, branding, alumni and student recruitment challenges.

Academica’s annual University Applicant Survey (UAS™) and College Applicant Survey (CAS™)
survey almost 100,000 post-secondary applicants every spring, and the company has provided
research and strategic consulting to more than one hundred college, university, and education clients.

Academica Group is involved in a number of innovative national educational policy research projects, such as the development of an instrument to measure Perceived Return on Investment in Post- Secondary Education (PRoI-PSE).

For media information, please contact:
Rod Skinkle, President, CEO
tel. 519.433.8302 ext. 206 or Toll Free 1.866.922.8636 ext. 206
rod@academica.com

Ken Steele, Senior Vice-President, Education Marketing
tel. 519.433.8302 ext. 205 or Toll Free 1.866.922.8636 ext. 205
ken@academica.ca