After a multi-year tenure with the firm, Pastrana moves into Executive Leadership Team role

CCOMGROUP Co-Chairmen Manny Machado and Luis Gonzalez-Esteves announce the promotion of Sandra Pastrana, established advertising and communications professional with award-winning results, to President, effective immediately. In this role, Pastrana will help evolve the business in its creative and strategic capabilities, while enhancing CCOMGROUP's future-facing vision. 

Pastrana has a long tenure with the agency, serving most recently as Senior Vice President/Client Services, while leading the firm's robust energy and technology practice. She has overseen highly recognized CCOMGROUP work, such as the 2023 Florida Power & Light (FPL) campaign, More than Names, among many others. When speaking of the award-winning work brought to life, Pastrana touts the multidisciplinary agency team, "Our collaborative departments enable us to join diverse skill sets under one umbrella to develop innovative campaigns with groundbreaking results."

In a recent joint statement, Machado and Gonzalez-Esteves highlight their excitement in having Pastrana in the role: "Sandra's rich experience in the marketing-communications arena makes her uniquely qualified for this new role within the firm. Her mindful and effective stewardship of our client partners speaks for itself. We are certain that her leadership, coupled with the dedication of all our associates will propel us to even higher levels of success."

As President, Pastrana will be responsible for CCOMGROUP's strategic direction, operations and management of the varied agency departments, from Creative, to Media to Public Relations.

Appointments Follow Constructive Engagement with Elliott Investment Management 

Match Group, announced today that it has appointed Laura Jones and Spencer Rascoff to the Company's Board of Directors, effective immediately.

"We are pleased to welcome Laura and Spencer to the Match Group Board as part of our ongoing efforts to add skills and expertise that complement the capabilities of our existing directors and will further support the Company's long-term success," said Tom McInerney, Chairman of Match Group. "Laura has deep experience creating best-in-class marketing organizations that have shaped brands and fueled growth, and Spencer is a distinguished entrepreneur with a proven track record of building and scaling consumer internet businesses. This is a time of great opportunity for Match Group, and we believe Laura and Spencer will be additive as we deliver on our strategy to drive value."

"At Match Group, we are focused on continuously innovating and evolving our global platform," said Bernard Kim, Chief Executive Officer at Match Group. "To that end, we are executing strategies to enhance performance at Tinder, continue to drive growth at Hinge and improve user experiences across our platform to meet changing needs and expectations. I look forward to collaborating with Laura, Spencer and the rest of the Board as we create value by connecting millions of people around the world in meaningful ways."

"I'm honored to be joining the Match Group Board during this incredibly important time for the Company as it continues to evolve and address the changing needs of its customers," said Ms. Jones. "I look forward to working with the rest of the Match Group Board and management team and bringing my global marketing and product expertise to the Company as it focuses on driving long-term user and revenue growth."

"I'm joining the Match Group Board because of the opportunity to build on the Company's disruptive technology and AI to evolve existing brands and build new ones," said Mr. Rascoff. "Match Group has a strong foundation, and I am eager to accelerate the momentum underway to generate value for all stakeholders."

The appointments followed a constructive dialogue with Elliott Investment Management, L.P. (together with its affiliates, "Elliott"), with which the Company also entered into an information-sharing agreement to facilitate ongoing collaboration toward the Board's goal of driving sustainable value for all shareholders. 

Marc Steinberg, Partner at Elliott, said, "We are one of the largest investors of Match Group today because we believe in its opportunity for significant value creation as the global leader in online dating. We appreciate the collaboration with management and the Board over the past several months, and we are confident that Laura Jones and Spencer Rascoff are strong additions to the Board. We believe their unique skills and perspectives will help support the Company through its next phase of growth, and we look forward to continuing our collaboration with Match Group and its management team as the Company executes on the substantial opportunity ahead."

Mr. McInerney continued, "We have engaged constructively with Elliott and appreciate the feedback they have shared. We remain confident in our portfolio strategy and our ability to drive long-term sustainable growth and increase profitability."

Match Group looks forward to continuing to engage with Elliott and all its shareholders, including at an investor day, to showcase the Company's full management team and business prospects. The Company will provide more details on the investor day once a date for the event has been set.

Digital transformation software and services firm Trianz proudly announces the appointment of Preeti Verma Vig as Assistant Vice President (AVP) and Head of Leadership and Sales Hiring. With over two decades of exemplary experience in global HR functions, Preeti brings a wealth of expertise to her new role, having excelled in various capacities at reputed organizations such as Genpact and Grey Orange.

Preeti's appointment marks a significant stride forward for Trianz as it continues to redefine its value proposition with an 'IP Led' model. This innovative approach aims to deliver the fastest time to value, lowest human dependence, and highest ROI for clients, leveraging our hyper-automated platforms such as Concierto.Cloud, Extrica.AI,  and Pulse.

In her new role at Trianz, Preeti will spearhead leadership hiring initiatives, leveraging her extensive experience and strategic acumen to identify and attract top-tier talent. Additionally, she will play a pivotal role in enhancing talent branding and marketing efforts, further solidifying Trianz' position as an employer of choice in the global marketplace.

Throughout her distinguished career, Preeti has showcased exceptional proficiency in business partnering, talent management, and talent acquisition, distinguishing herself as a leader in global HR operations at Genpact. At Grey Orange, she successfully led talent acquisition initiatives across the APAC, EMEA, and India regions, underscoring her ability to drive strategic recruitment efforts on a global scale.

"We are thrilled to welcome Preeti to the Trianz family," said Sri Manchala, CEO of Trianz and Author of Crossing the Digital Faultline. "Her proven track record of success and her deep understanding of talent acquisition will play a pivotal role in hiring leaders driven by our purpose - to help accelerate digital transformations - and motivated to change the way our industry delivers value. We are confident her leadership will propel our hiring efforts to new heights, enabling us to continue driving industry-leading transformations in cloud, data and analytics, AI, and the digital workplace."

"I am thrilled to join the Trianz family," said Preeti Verma Vig. "I am excited to leverage my extensive global experience to lead impactful leadership hiring initiatives with a focus on innovation and excellence. Together, we will continue to raise the bar in talent acquisition, driving transformative growth for Trianz and delivering exceptional value to our clients." 

Preeti's domain expertise is further underscored by her Lean Six Sigma Green Belt certification and recognition as a certified 'Licensed to Hire' professional by the Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM).

Join us in welcoming Preeti to Trianz. Her appointment marks a significant milestone in our journey toward excellence in talent acquisition, reaffirming our commitment to delivering exceptional solutions to our clients.

An open-source effort for mobile-specific accessibility guidelines filling gaps in today's standards 

Evinced, the leading software company powering accessible web and mobile development, today announced its first draft of Mobile Content Accessibility Guidelines (MCAG) in order to accelerate development of a national accessibility standard for mobile apps.

By 2025, 3.7 billion people – 72% of the global internet base – will access the internet exclusively via mobile. However, the guidelines in use for digital accessibility today – the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines – came to be nearly 30 years ago, on May 5, 1999. While they were a major accomplishment in accessibility, they were created before smartphones, and the few major versions released since then remain largely web and desktop-oriented.

"At Evinced, we are deeply committed to furthering digital accessibility and inclusion. But the lack of truly mobile-specific accessibility guidelines has been a significant roadblock," said Navin Thadani, Evinced CEO and Co-Founder. "To accelerate this, we invested many months of research, collaboration, and development to create this first draft of MCAG. With help from accessibility colleagues across the industry, we think there's a real chance to extend this draft and possibly even fold it into WCAG someday, as a community effort that is overdue."

Why MCAG Is Needed

Prior to now, mobile app developers and accessibility reviewers have had to review mobile apps with respect to guidelines developed originally for desktop applications. While many of the principles in the Web Content Accessibility Guidelines are general enough to be "borrowed" in this way for mobile apps, and some recent additions to WCAG have related more to mobile apps, significant problems exist nonetheless.

One example of this is that many regulatory bodies have taken different approaches to the problem of what parts of WCAG don't apply to mobile apps. This creates an international patchwork of guidelines that makes development harder. 

Other examples come from the fact that desktop and mobile experiences are fundamentally different. Consider "touch targets", the part of a screen that activates a function like a button.  For web software, these can be quite small, since users are typically using a mouse to interact with the screen and the accuracy is pinpoint.¹ By contrast, mobile app users typically rely on their fingers to interact with their phone screens. And as finger sizes vary broadly for a given user or among a set of users, touch targets need to be much larger. True mobile-specific accessibility guidelines would take this into account along with mobile accessibility principles from Google and Apple as well.

With new integrations from LeadCloud and Transparent.ly, Arity arms marketers with more dynamic solutions to reach their best customers and optimize operations

Today, mobility data and analytics company Arity, unveils new features and enhancements to its suite of Marketing Solutions, creating the premier solution for marketers to uniquely maximize customer lifetime value and profitability. 

Arity has joined forces with Transparent.ly and LeadCloud to offer the first full funnel, omnichannel marketing solution that leverages unique driving behavior data to connect with ideal prospect customers based on how, when, and where they drive. The newly enhanced suite of solutions includes:

• The Arity Marketing Platform, powered by Transparent.ly, which helps optimize a marketer’s acquisition efforts through Arity’s ability to generate driving behavior insights on nearly 175 million US drivers. Adding Transparent.ly’s formidable ability to connect with high-intent prospects and enhance target marketing efforts, gives marketers a more robust solution to generate clicks, leads, and calls and reach prospect customers with unique insights across the entire customer journey.
• LeadCloud Integration Services, which offer marketers a suite of professional services to help them optimize the quality, quantity, and lifetime value of incoming leads, validate data coming from partners, and filter the data to increase efficiency by creating a single point of entry for internal customer acquisition.

Arity Marketing Solutions leverage driving behavior data at scale for an especially unique competitive advantage for auto-focused businesses.

• Auto Insurance marketers can gain understanding up front of how consumers drive and use that information to run ad campaigns targeting drivers based on behaviors and propensities, including driving risk, mileage, commute, intent to purchase, premium price, and more, all to gain greater customer lifetime value and profitability. Insights like this driving data can also be used to more accurately price auto insurance based on how people drive, providing a uniquely seamless experience from marketing to pricing to bind, a benefit available only with Arity.
• Automotive retailers can drive more qualified traffic and sales leads for their products into their marketing funnel based on how, when, and where people drive.
• Retail marketers, specifically with brick-and-mortar operations, can gain insight into when and how often their target customer drives past their real-world locations, giving them better ability to predict and reach the prospects who frequently drive past their stores and offer compelling, more relevant offers.

“It’s a challenging time for auto-focused marketers right now as consumers are simultaneously demanding greater personalization and lower prices when shopping for new cars, auto insurance, and other driving-related needs,” said Lisa Jillson, Head of Marketing & Publishers, Arity. “Combining LeadCloud and Transparent.ly’s well-established brands and technologies with Arity’s data and analytics expertise uniquely positions us to provide marketers more differentiated products and services that will drive greater business results and an overall improved bottom line.”

Customers can now easily create channels in minutes, growing revenue and audiences on their own apps and FAST aggregators

Brightcove, the world’s most trusted streaming technology company, announces the launch of Cloud Playout 2.0, offering customers new ways to create linear channels, monetize their media, and streamline their workflows in one platform. 

Brightcove’s Cloud Playout 2.0 allows users to leverage their existing content catalog and live streams to build a channel in minutes. The enhanced Cloud Playout includes a linear scheduler to create an electronic program guide (EPG), which can be displayed on apps and FAST platforms. Once a channel is built, media companies can operationalize the distribution of their linear channels to owned-and-operated (O&O) properties or FAST platforms. Managing this end-to-end experience within the Brightcove platform allows media companies to optimize their content with first-party data and analytics and control their ad monetization.

“Cloud Playout 2.0 gives media companies an efficient way to grow reach, increase engagement, and monetize their content,” said Scott Levine, Chief Product Officer at Brightcove. “This expansion creates a centralized platform for driving new business models, content windows, and experiences, allowing our customers to save time, money and resources. Cloud Playout 2.0 works with our leading monetization and insights tools to ensure every stream drives business value and enables our customers to delight their audience.”

Cloud Playout 2.0 helps media companies with:

• Reach and Engagement: Create channels on their owned websites and apps to increase viewer engagement and extend their reach by delivering those channels to new audiences and markets with FAST aggregators.
• Monetization: Adapt their monetization strategy across channels to increase revenue with a multi-tier approach, including Brightcove’s

• Server-side ad Insertion (SSAI) to manage ad placement durations and bypass inconvenient ad blockers without diminishing quality and the user experience with issues like prolonged buffering.
• Ad Monetization service to maximize ad revenue through full-stack or unsold ad inventory.
• Free, ad-supported (FAST) channels to reach new audiences and drive viewers to subscription VOD catalogs to explore new releases and premium content.
• Test and iterate ad rules across channels in minutes to improve revenue.

• Efficiency: Create efficient workflows that run schedules in one platform. Customers can create and manage complex schedules for their channels while offering a VOD streaming service and live events through one platform. The linear scheduler enables users to easily search, add assets and channels, and see potential conflicts. From there, customers can convert schedules into an EPG to keep audiences up to date on the latest content.
• Insights: Cloud Playout 2.0 works with Brightcove’s insights and analytics solutions so media companies can assess viewing habits and content performance to inform their programming and promotion strategies.

Contentful announces the general availability of its second product, Contentful Studio, providing designers, marketers, and content editors with powerful tools to assemble intelligent experiences at scale

Contentful, a leading composable content platform for digital-first businesses, today announced the general availability of Contentful Studio, its newest product. Contentful Studio empowers digital teams, including marketers and designers, to visually assemble, and manage digital experiences without relying on developers for every step. 

Empowering Seamless Content with AI-Infused Workflows

Traditionally, crafting and assembling content has presented manual challenges for digital teams, impeding efficiency and stifling creativity. Contentful's AI-ready approach simplifies how experiences are designed and assembled with intelligent content generation and automated tasks such as content generation and content variants, thereby liberating teams from manual tasks and unlocking their creative potential — without waiting for a developer to do it for them.

"In today's data-driven world, creating experiences requires a combination of content, design, and data to create meaningful connections with customers," said Mairead O’Donovan, Chief Product Officer of Contentful. "It demands a strategic blend of human creativity and productivity that can be accelerated with AI to personalize experiences that resonate and drive brand loyalty. Contentful Studio equips our customers, partners, and new digital teams to create market or brand-differentiated experiences. By unleashing the power of composable content, digital teams can achieve new levels of engagement and impact for their brands to ultimately drive unprecedented growth."

The new capabilities of Contentful Studio address scenarios including:

• Scale to build once and use everywhere: Accelerates time-to-impact, reducing digital team efforts from months to minutes. Contentful Studio offers scalability through patterns and design tokens.
• Creative Autonomy in one platform: Empowers marketers and designers with an intuitive drag-and-drop canvas to edit, visualize, and assemble experiences while ensuring brand consistency.
• AI-ready to effortlessly automate content: Contentful's design structure, enterprise-level governance, and roles and permissions ensure brand consistency and integrity while providing users with the ability to design, edit, and publish translated experiences across channels and markets.

Direct-to-consumer customizable eyewear brand, Pair Eyewear, uses Contentful Studio to showcase the perfect pair of glasses for each visitor. Contentful Studio’s visual interface enables their team to quickly create fresh and engaging content that reflects their brand's spirit of constant change.

"Without Contentful Studio, the learning curve for our Marketing team is pretty high. That means more work for engineering, taking up valuable time with simple things like adding buttons or changing colors. A visual representation of content will make a huge difference and take down that barrier for Marketing. Being able to empower our team to do that on their own is huge,” said Mike Kuerschner, Engineering Manager, Pair Eyewear.

Intelligent, Easy Collaboration for Marketers and Designers

Contentful serves as the bridge between human intuition and machine learning intelligence, fostering seamless collaboration among digital teams. With Contentful Studio, non-technical team members can effortlessly assemble and deploy content across various platforms, from mobile and social media to digital signage and websites.

Supporting genuine and inspiring customer engagement in 10 new regions 

Tulip, the global leader in customer engagement solutions including Clienteling, Associate-Customer Communications and Appointment Management, is excited to announce the expansion of its platform with the addition of 10 new language capabilities.

As of March 19, 2024 Tulip has added support for 10 additional languages, including Swedish, Danish, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Hungarian, Dutch, Finnish, Latvian, and Lithuanian. Added language support will be available for all new and existing Tulip customers across all solutions and services. Tulip's platform now supports 25 languages, enabling global deployment for international brands.

"By expanding our language offerings, we are not only breaking down communication barriers but also fostering more meaningful connections between retailers and their customers," said Ian Rawlins, CEO of Tulip. "Our platform is designed to meet the unique needs of today's global retail landscape, and with these new languages, we are ensuring that more brands can deliver exceptional service worldwide."

The expansion into new languages aims to deliver immediate value for Tulip's clients, making the platform accessible in countries where these languages are predominantly spoken. Retailers can now effortlessly connect with a wider audience, providing a tailored shopping experience and extending their market reach.

Tulip's commitment to innovation and excellence in retail continually sets new standards for creating authentic and dynamic customer relationships. The new languages demonstrate Tulip's responsive approach to its diverse clientele and dedication to being at the forefront of retail technology.