Is it something in the water or something in the DNA? On Wednesday IntelliDress, an address hygiene offering from Little Rock, AR-based CognitiveData, was recognized as the most effective product during a data quality competition held at the National Center for Database Marketing conference.
Little Rock is also the base for Acxiom Corp., a major player in the data quality and marketing services arena.
But CognitiveData and Acxiom are linked by more than geography. Both Rod Ford, CognitiveData’s founder and CEO, and DMA Hall of Fame member and former Acxiom company leader Charles D. Morgan, graduated from the University of Arkansas with a bachelor’s degree in the science of mechanical engineering. And Ford and Morgan break bread at the same family table during holidays.
Furthermore, both are fascinated with the programming aspects of consumer data integration. Both, albeit at separate times, ran Mortech, a catalog order fulfillment service once known as BSA.
This would seem a good argument for eugenics, were it not for one simple fact: Ford and Morgan aren’t related by blood.
Ford and Morgan pere met in the mid 1990s, when Ford bought Mortech, a catalog order fulfillment service Morgan had acquired for Acxiom, and then purchased for himself, Ford said. Ford operated Mortech for a year and a half before marrying his CMO, Charles Morgan’s daughter Caroline. (Caroline Ford-nee-Morgan has forsaken industry for academia: She currently teaches international marketing at two universities in Arkansas.)
Ford operated Mortech for a few years before selling the company off in pieces to parties he would identify only as “private DM investors.” Ford maintains a small stake in the unsold pieces.
In early 2000, Ford founded mailing address hygiene firm CognitiveData. Was Charles Morgan ever involved with CognitiveData? No, neither as an investor nor as a formal advisor nor board member. “He was busy running Acxiom,” Ford told Direct Newsline.
Not that CognitiveData needed him. The company has done well relying on the model Ford established, which uses transactional data exclusively to establish current name (a headache for those marketing to new brides, for example) and address veracity. IntelliDress, the company’s flagship product, also relies on algorithms that identify common data entry/typographic errors.
Even when Morgan stepped away from Acxiom in late 2007, he didn’t seek to tinker with CognitiveData. “This is my thing. He didn’t ask, and we didn’t want him to ask,” Ford said. That said, Ford acknowledges watching Morgan during the time Morgan was running Acxiom.
So what is Morgan doing with himself now? Along with former Acxiom executives James T. Womble and Roger S. Kline, he’s operating a golf club and residential community in Cabo San Lucas, Mexico. While Morgan, who holds a pilot’s license, is still flying, according to his son-in-law, he no longer races cars competitively.
Will there be a third generation of Morgan/Ford engineers going into the data business? It’s a little soon to tell — Ford’s son is eight and his daughter is six. But if they have an interest in joining him, Ford wouldn’t object a bit.
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