Cision Integrates Global Leadership and Functional Teams across Cision, Brandwatch, and PR Newswire in Move to Deliver Greater End-to-End Value to Customers

Cision, the leading provider of consumer and media intelligence and communications solutions, recently announced a new leadership team as part of its strategic plan to deliver a more robust, end-to-end customer experience. This move involves integrating the leadership and functional teams across Cision, Brandwatch, and PR Newswire, while preserving the strength and identity of each go-to-market brand. These changes are positioned to deliver even greater value to customers in managing their brands amidst the rapidly evolving media and consumer intelligence landscape.

"Integrating our leadership and functional teams will help create a more connected and agile company, well positioned to meet the evolving needs of our customers now and in the future," said Cali Tran, CEO of Cision. "Our ability to react quickly to market changes and opportunities will translate to transformational product innovation, improved and expanded data access, and a holistic and streamlined customer experience."

Under the new structure, Cision will consolidate its business and leadership teams under CEO Cali Tran, as well as align its product development and expansion efforts. The leadership team includes the following newly named members:

• Amanda Schmidt, Chief People Officer
• Michael Amsinck, Chief Product Officer
• Carrie Parker, Chief Marketing Officer
• Nabilah Irshad, Chief Legal Officer
• Andy Bhojwani, Chief Information Officer
• Pehr Luedtke, Senior Vice President of Global Content

This new infrastructure will allow Cision, Brandwatch, and PR Newswire to deliver faster, more efficient and personalized services for small and medium businesses, mid-market, and Enterprise customers. Combined, these services represent the most comprehensive media, brand, and consumer coverage available, across paid, owned, earned, traditional, and social media platforms.

The announcement follows the recent launch of CisionOne, a fully integrated monitoring, AI enabled insights and outreach solution, in the UK. CisionOne is set to roll out to additional global markets this year.

"Cision remains focused on delivering our award-winning solutions and best-in-class customer service to thousands of global customers who rely on our technology and people every day to manage critical marketing, communications and reputational functions," said Tran. "Over the next year, we will progressively update and expand our product suite to ensure that Cision is continuing to address customers' needs holistically and efficiently."

Round Led by Sapphire Sport, First-of-its-Kind Early Investor at the Intersection of Technology, Entertainment and Sport

SportsVisio, a new AI-powered software company bringing image-based, deep learning to the sports analytics space, is announcing a $3M seed round led by Sapphire Sport, a first-of-its-kind early-stage investment platform at the intersection of technology, media, entertainment and sport. SportsVisio's revolutionary artificial intelligence (AI) technology is bringing augmented reality to the amateur sports level, allowing players, coaches and parents to record any game or live event on their smartphone and then enabling users to stream live, review statistics, access insightful analytics, and create highlights, all in real-time. Their cost-effective, platform agnostic technology applies artificial intelligence and computer vision, with no additional hardware, to automate statistical analysis and content creation faster and more seamlessly than ever before.

SportsVisio was founded in 2021 by CEO Jason Syversen and a veteran team. Jason and COO Samuel Corbitt previously co-founded Siege Technologies and Jason and CTO Dan Oblinger, both DARPA alums, have numerous startups under their belt. Their $3M Seed round, led by Sapphire Sport, is being used to further develop their next generation AI technology and to grow their sales team, as they continue to scale a revenue operation that includes current partnerships with leagues and media properties.

"AI is the future of how we develop technology to create more seamless, integrated products for a generation of consumers who expect professional capabilities in the palm of their hands," said SportsVisio Founder and CEO Jason Syversen. "This product is going to change how players train, how coaches recruit and how leagues compete at every level of the game. We're thrilled to have partners like Sapphire Sport on board who believe in democratizing access to sports video and analytics for everyone."

"The market is crying for a new solution that captures the next generation of athletes and brings high-tech capabilities to the consumer sports analytics space," said Doug Higgins, Co-Founder of Sapphire Sport. "SportsVisio is developing a next generation product and tapping into the future of how amateur and collegiate athletics are utilizing content to better their game."

The SportsVisio platform applies artificial intelligence and computer vision to automate analysis and content creation for observers, participants, and coaches. SportsVisio helps its users collect and display highlights seamlessly. Additionally, the technology analyzes stats for individual players and teams, creating profiles and "lockers'' in which games and highlights can be viewed, stored, and distributed across various social media channels. Finally, the technology serves to help teams and players improve their abilities through collaborative coaching functionalities.

Sapphire Sport, a first-of-its-kind early-stage investment platform at the intersection technology, media, entertainment and sport, announced a $181M second fund vehicle earlier this year to invest in companies like SportsVisio, companies using technology to power the next generation of consumer behavior across sports, media and digital commerce. This is Sapphire Sport's second investment from Fund II. Their first fund vehicle includes investments in companies like Overtime, Fevo and Tonal.

Powered by the Brand Vitality Score (VIT), Traackr's Leaderboards arm brands with competitive intelligence to measure and scale influencer marketing strategies

Following the introduction of the Brand Vitality Score (VIT) in 2019 as the new gold standard for influencer marketing measurement, Traackr, the leading performance-driven influencer marketing platform, today announced new competitive benchmarks, allowing beauty and fashion brands to compare their influencer marketing performance against competitors. Now publicly available as a free resource on BrandVitalityScore.com, Traackr's monthly Beauty and Fashion Leaderboards rank the top 2,833 beauty brands and 837 fashion brands by VIT in the U.S., U.K. and France, and highlight specific areas for brands to improve performance.

Traackr has supported beloved beauty and fashion brands such as Dove, L'Oréal, Pandora, Shiseido and UGG to analyze, adjust and grow their influencer programs through the VIT framework. The public Leaderboards now unlock this competitive intelligence for all beauty and fashion brands looking to understand how to unlock the performance of their programs. Marketers can search for their brand in the Leaderboard to see where they rank and how key metrics compare against other top brands, such as:

• The number of unique influencers mentioning a brand
• The frequency of mentions per influencer
• The average audience size (reach per mention)
• VIT rate (VIT per reach)

"As a global lifestyle brand that focuses on elevated consumer experiences and marketplace management, efficiency and efficacy in our influencer marketing program are paramount," said Roberta Cammisa, head of EMEA PR at UGG. "Our team has integrated Traackr's VIT metric as one of the many metrics that we use in order to analyze performance, set goals and hone our strategies. We use VIT to benchmark our performance against competitors, seeing how we're pacing at a macro level and comparing with their VIT drivers. Traackr's insights are proving to be a valuable resource as we measure our influencer marketing strategies and performance."

Earned media value has been an ineffective metric for measuring influencer marketing because it has no connection to ROI or sales. Traackr created VIT to measure what matters - visibility (reach of content), impact (engagement generated) and brand trust (quality of content on brand image) - and provide transparency and granularity so that practitioners of influencer marketing connect their actions to the performance of their program. VIT was the first metric uniquely designed to measure a brand's performance across influencer content and can be used as a broader framework for improving influencer strategies.

"There is no one-size-fits-all approach to influencer marketing, and VIT illuminates the different paths to success," said Pierre-Loïc Assayag, CEO and co-founder of Traackr. "Based on VIT, Leaderboards give marketers a roadmap to success, shining a light on where they underperform and where investment is paying off, so they can adjust and keep improving. Leaderboards can help marketers make tough decisions about where and how much to spend to maximize influencer marketing ROI."

HubSpot, a leading customer relationship management (CRM) platform, announced today that Andrew Anagnost, President and CEO at Autodesk, will join the company’s Board of Directors, effective September 5. Anagnost brings more than 25 years of product, business, and marketing experience focused on driving strategy, transformation, and product development.

Anagnost joins as Avanish Sahai transitions from the board, also effective September 5. Sahai joined HubSpot’s Board in 2018 and his deep expertise on platforms and partnerships has made a great impact on the growth of HubSpot’s customer platform.

“I want to thank Avanish for his support and guidance over the past five years and wish him luck on his next exciting chapter pursuing educational opportunities. He’s been an incredible partner who was instrumental in helping HubSpot move from an applications company to a platform company. While I’m sad to see Avanish go, I’m delighted to welcome Andrew to our board,” said Brian Halligan, HubSpot’s co-founder and Executive Chairperson. “As a current CEO with a long history of delivering value to customers, Andrew has an impressive track record for scaling high-growth companies. I think he’ll prove to be an amazing partner for HubSpot as we continue to innovate with new AI capabilities and power scaling companies to connect more deeply with their customers.”

“HubSpot is an innovative company and their platform serves an important market need for businesses around the world to better connect with their customers,” said Anagnost. “I’m really looking forward to working with the HubSpot team and my fellow board members to help the company grow and meet their mission.”

Prior to becoming President and CEO of Autodesk in June 2017, Anagnost served as Chief Marketing Officer and SVP of the Business Strategy & Marketing organization. In this role, he served as architect and leader of Autodesk’s business model transition—moving the company to become a software-as-a-service (SaaS) solutions provider. Early in his Autodesk career, Anagnost led the development of the company’s manufacturing products and grew Autodesk Inventor revenue to over $500 million.

“When joining the board five years ago, I was drawn to HubSpot’s focus on solving a critical gap for small and medium-sized businesses, and I’m proud of the milestones that HubSpot has achieved to help companies grow better,” said Sahai. “It’s been a pleasure working with HubSpot and my fellow board members, and I’m confident that Andrew and the rest of the team will do a great job supporting HubSpot in this exciting chapter.”

Deloitte's ConvergeCONSUMER™ data, analytics and AI platform is now optimized for Google Cloud, accelerating enterprise value with Vertex AI, Cortex Framework, BigQuery and more

Deloitte today announced a new co-innovation initiative with Google Cloud that helps consumer businesses transform how they operate to create more relevant, engaging and effective customer experiences. Deloitte's ConvergeCONSUMER portfolio of solutions is now available on Google Cloud and integrates Google Cloud's leading data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and Generative AI (Gen AI) capabilities. The solutions enable consumer organizations to rapidly deploy AI-powered tools that help them more accurately forecast demand, personalize marketing campaigns and optimize product pricing, which can increase brand loyalty and extend competitive advantage. 

To improve business performance, companies have traditionally relied on in-house teams of data scientists and engineers to develop and maintain bespoke solutions, which often results in significant expenses and lengthy development timelines. ConvergeCONSUMER revolutionizes this approach by providing organizations with turnkey solutions that can unlock a new layer of insights about their businesses and the consumer audiences they target. For example, customers can now apply Google Cloud's AI and data analytics capabilities to their business data with an extensive array of external data points from ConvergeCONSUMER, such as insights about specific customer segments or weather events with logistical implications.

ConvergeCONSUMER by Deloitte and Google Cloud
ConvergeCONSUMER ingests a wide array of consumer signals to better predict customer behavior, improve demand forecasting, optimize supply chains, streamline costs and tailor consumer experiences. With ConvergeCONSUMER now optimized for Google Cloud's infrastructure and products, enterprises can:

• Accelerate decision-making with Google Cloud Vertex AI: ConvergeCONSUMER combines Google Cloud's Vertex AI platform with Deloitte's comprehensive, proprietary consumer and market data and algorithms. Customers can more easily build and train machine learning models with the ability to choose pre-trained or custom AI models that accelerate decision-making and generate value from improved business analysis.
• Quickly develop Gen AI experiences like chatbots and search engines: ConvergeCONSUMER integrates Google Cloud's Generative AI App Builder and Generative AI Studio to help businesses efficiently build applications that enable customers and employees to quickly get relevant information. For instance, an online retailer could create a chatbot to expedite customer inquiries about product availability and returns, freeing up time for agents to manage more complex inquiries.
• Improve business insights with Google Cloud Cortex Framework: ConvergeCONSUMER leverages the Cortex Framework to help businesses enhance data and generate powerful insights about how they operate, plan and forecast. Cortex provides packaged solutions content and reference architectures that businesses can easily adapt to integrate across a variety of public, private and community data sources, including sales and marketing, finance, supply chain and more. For example, with ConvergeCONSUMER and Cortex, organizations can rapidly deploy demand-sensing and forecasting analytics, identifying insights faster and more cost-effectively.
• Accelerate time-to-value from business analysis with BigQuery: ConvergeCONSUMER applies BigQuery, Data Flow and Dataproc to help organizations derive value from structured and unstructured data, regardless of its storage location, which can be enriched with consumer data and external signals for improved business insights. Organizations can also view analytics in real-time, with the ability to apply pre-integrated signals to these datasets and accelerate time-to-value from business analysis.

"Our research on the Future of Consumer has revealed that consumers have an increasingly diverse set of preferences and an expectation for choice and convenience," said Ben Stiller, ConvergeCONSUMER general manager and principal, Deloitte Consulting LLP. "To win in this changing market, consumer-facing companies should be more precise, granular and responsive to individual customer needs. However, historically, these companies won based on their scale or 'mass': production, distribution, top-down decision-making, marketing and more. ConvergeCONSUMER is about helping companies deliver outcomes and quickly engineer advantage by moving their decision-making and experiences from mass to micro at scale. By combining Google Cloud's advanced generative AI, data analytics and cloud technologies with Deloitte's IP, deep industry/domain knowledge, expansive set of customer signals and engineering capabilities, we are ushering in a new era of customer centricity that can have dramatic commercial, operational and financial benefits for our clients."

"Consumer businesses run highly complex organizations and need tools that are practical to adopt and yield tangible benefits in real-world settings," said Carrie Tharp, vice president of Strategic Industries, Google Cloud. "With ConvergeCONSUMER, businesses can easily deploy and manage solutions that combine Google Cloud's leading generative AI and data analytics with Deloitte's deep industry experience, helping consumer organizations optimize areas that are core to their business, such as demand forecasting and supply chain performance."

An Expanding Alliance
Deloitte and Google Cloud have a longstanding alliance helping business and public sector organizations fundamentally improve how they operate. This next phase of the collaboration combines Deloitte's strategic vision and Google Cloud's leading technology– helping clients make key decisions to improve consumers' experiences and expand their overall market potential.

Deloitte is a four-time winner of Google Cloud's Global Services Partner of the Year award and is the inaugural winner of the Google Public Sector Partner of the Year award. Deloitte was recently recognized as the 2021 Industry Solution Partner of the Year.

Converge by Deloitte platforms are used by leading consumer, retail, banking, insurance, wealth management, life sciences and healthcare companies in more than 30 countries. ConvergeCONSUMER combines Deloitte's cross-industry expertise and business strategy with next-generation technology to help organizations improve CX, expand product offerings, acquire new customers and deliver a strong ROI. Converge by Deloitte is powered by a $750+ million investment in research and development, talent and alliances over five years to help reinvent and reimagine industries leveraging the breadth and depth of Deloitte and its ecosystem.

• All-new Adobe Express with Adobe Firefly beta is now ready for general availability

• Express makes it fast, easy and fun for users across all skill levels to create social media posts, videos, images, PDFs, flyers, logos and more

• Express is included in most Creative Cloud plans with support for rich workflows across Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Illustrator and Adobe Acrobat

• Enterprises are adopting Express to enhance the productivity of creative teams and empower marketing organizations to quickly and easily create on-brand content that stands out

Adobe (Nasdaq:ADBE) showcased the exciting momentum of the all-new Adobe Express, announcing the general availability for desktop web. The latest version of the AI-first, all-in-one content creation app with Firefly beta generative AI capabilities is revolutionizing creative expression, making it fast, easy and fun for users of all skill levels to design and share standout content.

The groundbreaking innovations in Express bring the power and precision of Adobe’s popular photo, design, video, document and generative AI tools into a new AI-first, all-in-one editor, making tasks like creating stunning social video content, touching up images, importing, editing and decorating PDFs and laying out amazing designs, fast and easy.

Express is being used by millions of users globally—spanning all skill levels—to create captivating social content, compelling videos, visually stunning PDFs, digital cards and flyers, engaging book reports and resumes, and much more. Available globally and with Firefly generative AI now supporting prompts in 100+ languages, it’s even easier for Express users to generate high-quality images, create stunning text effects, streamline workflows and improve productivity in their language of choice, all within Express. These new AI-driven features are available now on desktop web, with plans to bring the latest version of Express to mobile soon.

“With groundbreaking innovations and generative AI at the core of Express, we’re empowering an ever-expanding user base with an AI-first, all-in-one tool that makes content creation fast, easy and fun,” said Govind Balakrishnan, senior vice president, Adobe Express and Digital Media Services at Adobe. “The all-new Express is revolutionizing how people turn ideas into stunning content and we’re just getting started with exciting innovations across image creation, design, video, audio, PDFs and more still to come.”

Express for Creative Cloud Members

Whether you’re a student, creative professional, communicator, small business or enterprise, Express is right for you. Creative Cloud memberships include the full paid version of Express Premium. CC members can easily access, edit and work with creative assets from Photoshop and Illustrator directly, or add linked files into Express that always stay in sync across apps. Users can also import and enhance PDFs quickly and easily in Express, adding eye-catching text, images, backgrounds, brand logos and more to uplevel any document. Express enables users to collaborate in real-time, and quickly create content for social media or concept approval, all while empowering teams to stay on brand.

Express in Enterprises

For enterprises, Express bridges workflows between creative professionals and marketers through integrations into Creative Cloud applications as well as Experience Manager, Adobe’s world-class CMS solution in Adobe Experience Cloud. Seamless integrations democratize creativity beyond design teams, and enable organizations to create, collaborate and deliver content velocity at scale. With Express and Firefly for Enterprise, any employee across an organization can generate beautiful, ready-to-share content.

“Adobe Express has empowered our creatives to focus on high-impact, high-value work while equipping other teams with a powerful but easy-to-use design tool. We can bypass repetitive, manual tasks and save time without compromising our brand or creative output,” said Bridget Esposito, vice president and group creative director at Prudential Financial.

“Ensuring that our brand is represented correctly and coherently in the digital world is paramount, and a task that is distributed across many of our global teams. With Adobe Express, we’re creating outstanding and brand uniform content in a way that’s scalable,” said Christina Lehnert, digital brand experience manager at Carl Zeiss AG.

Creativity for All

Small and medium business owners, solopreneurs, social media influencers, students and more can now easily plan, schedule, preview and publish standout content, all from one place. More than 56M students and educators around the world already have access to Express to collaborate in real-time to create stunning digital portfolios, shared projects, flyers, flashcards, animated videos and more.

Latest Innovations in Express

• New all-in-one editor gives users the ability to make high-impact design elements, engaging videos and images, stunning PDFs, animation and standout content ready for Instagram, TikTok and other social channels and platforms.
• Firefly integrated into Express makes it possible to quickly generate custom images and text effects from text prompts in over 100 languages and designed to be safe for commercial use.
• Deep workflows with Creative Cloud apps allow users to easily access, edit and work with creative assets from Photoshop and Illustrator directly within Express, or add linked files that always stay in sync across apps.
• New video, multiple page templates and design elements bring even more inspiration to the largest collection of beautiful, high-quality content, now with nearly 200 million assets including video and design templates, royalty-free Adobe Stock images, video and audio assets, almost 22,000 fonts, plus more icons, backgrounds and shapes.
• PDF support in the new all-in-one editor makes it even easier to import, edit and enhance documents to create visually stunning PDFs.
• More AI-power helps creators to take the guesswork out of design, and quickly find the perfect addition to content or get personalized template recommendations that fit unique styles, to create social media posts, videos, posters, flyers and more.
• Quick actions like remove background in images and videos, animate a character using just audio, convert to GIF and edit PDFs, makes it even easier to create standout content quickly and simply.
• Real-time co-editing and seamless review and commenting capabilities add speed to the creation process.
• Animations like Fade In, Pop, Flicker, Bungee bring text, photos, videos and assets to life in a new way. With Animate from Audio, powered by Adobe Character Animator, watch characters come to life with lips and gestures syncing to recorded dialogue.

Availability

Users can access Express for desktop for free with plans to bring the latest version of Express to mobile soon. For existing Creative Cloud members, the Express Premium plan is included. The Express and Firefly enterprise offering is now available.

Christianson brings extensive leadership and HR experience from Block, Inc. and Apple, Inc. to drive Quantum Metric's talent strategy and growth.

Quantum Metric, the customer-driven digital analytics platform, today announced the appointment of Helena Day Christianson as its new Chief People Officer. Christianson, a seasoned professional with over two decades of leadership and human resources expertise, will support continued organizational growth with a focus on innovation, diversity and inclusion, and employee development.

"We are delighted to welcome Helena to the Quantum Metric family," said Mario Ciabarra, CEO of Quantum Metric. "Her extensive experience in the technology industry, combined with her insight into people management and culture-building, will play a pivotal role in attracting top talent, nurturing our existing teams, and fostering a dynamic and inclusive work environment. Helena's strategic leadership will undoubtedly propel Quantum Metric towards sustained success."

Christianson's career has been marked by her ability to strategically shape and lead people functions at some of the leading technology companies. Her most recent role as the Head of People (CHRO) at Block, Inc. saw her successfully build, lead, and scale a global people organization across North America, Europe, and APAC. Before her tenure at Block, Inc., Christianson made significant contributions at Apple, Inc. as an HR leader in the Software and Services organization.

"I am honored to join Quantum Metric and be part of a team that is driven by a people-first mindset, both in the way each employee is supported and in the way we support digital organizations in meeting the needs of their customers," said Helena Day Christianson, Chief People Officer of Quantum Metric. "I look forward to working closely with the talented individuals at Quantum Metric and nurturing a culture that celebrates the diverse ways our teams show passion, persistence and integrity each and every day.

Quantum Metric has been consistently recognized for its outstanding workplace culture and employee-centric initiatives most recently including recognition as one of Glassdoor's 2023 Best Places to Work and Forbes' list of America's Best Startup Employers for 2023. With Christianson's arrival, Quantum Metric is poised to elevate its people strategy and reinforce its position as a trailblazer in the digital analytics sector.

Sophisticated privacy-first approach utilizes opted-in data sets, ensuring full compliance with evolving regulations

AUDIENCEX, the AI-enabled digital advertising partner built to optimize real-time campaign performance for brands and agencies, today announced a strategic partnership with Yobi, an AI-focused predictive data platform offering customized solutions for businesses to maximize marketing performance and shopper intelligence.

The partnership between AUDIENCEX and Yobi brings deeper predictive capabilities to AUDIENCEX Intelligence (AXi), a suite of AI-powered, privacy-safe data science tools that empower businesses to propel revenue growth while prioritizing customer experience and privacy. Utilizing Yobi's data, which captures critical behavioral signals without compromising personal information, independent agencies and challenger brands now have the ability to gain unrivaled performance from predictive audience modeling without prohibitive barriers to entry.

This strategic partnership combines AUDIENCEX’s digital marketing expertise and omnichannel media access with Yobi’s predictive modeling and fully consented data to enable businesses to uniquely optimize campaign performance, maximize return on ad spend (ROAS) and customer lifetime value, and gain a competitive advantage. In-market campaign results with several mid-market brands have demonstrated outstanding results when utilizing these capabilities through AXi. On average, these campaigns have seen significant reductions in CPA, with a decrease of approximately 65%. Simultaneously, CTRs have seen an impressive surge, with an increase of over 1460%. These enhancements translate into a substantial increase in ROI for AUDIENCEX clients and a more cost-effective allocation of their advertising budget.

"This partnership with Yobi will unlock the potential of AI-enabled predictive modeling for independent agencies and challenger brands," said Garrett MacDonald, CCO of AUDIENCEX. "We are excited to be working with Yobi in creating a powerful new solution that will help companies take customer experience and performance to the next level. This new approach will enable companies to utilize privacy-preserving predictive signals to enhance engagement and ensure relevance with their audiences. This groundbreaking collaboration will further empower our clients to stay ahead of the curve, power their campaigns with data-driven insights, understand their target audiences better, and achieve higher campaign effectiveness in today's fiercely competitive environment.”

“By activating ML generated predictive insights and optimizations, companies can unlock unprecedented demand generation and growth at a fraction of the cost,” noted Max Snow, CEO of Yobi, “We are proud to collaborate with AUDIENCEX to help businesses harness the power of predictive data science with complete consumer privacy.”