The RepTrak Company—best known for turning corporate reputation into measurable, actionable data—has tapped two heavy hitters for its Board of Directors: Thierry D’Hers and Catherine Hernandez-Blades. The appointments are designed to fast-track product innovation, deepen AI capabilities, and sharpen governance expertise as the company scales its reputation intelligence platform.

A Data Visionary Joins the Fold

Thierry D’Hers brings serious product and engineering chops, with a career spanning more than two decades at the intersection of analytics and innovation. He played a key role in building Tableau’s data visualization capabilities—work that influenced Microsoft’s PowerBI ascent—before leading product and engineering at Vivun.

Now advising tech companies from AI startups to mission-driven nonprofits, D’Hers sees RepTrak as sitting “at the intersection of technology, data, and trust.” He joins the board as the company leans into AI-driven stakeholder perception tools.

A Global Reputation Leader with Governance Cred

Catherine Hernandez-Blades’ resume reads like a masterclass in corporate communications and governance. The Emmy and Cannes Lions award-winner has helmed marketing and communications at SAIC, Aflac, and Flex, and now serves on the board of CoreCivic. She’s also earned spots on the Forbes Top 50 Global CMOs list and at Davos for her international reputation work.

Hernandez-Blades isn’t just an admirer—she’s been a RepTrak customer for more than a decade. “It quantifies teams’ business impact and plays a critical role in C-suite decision-making,” she said, calling out the strategic importance of the company’s upcoming product releases.

Why This Matters for RepTrak

Both hires arrive as RepTrak pushes forward with Compass™, its new AI-powered platform aimed at giving brands a sharper, more predictive understanding of how they’re perceived by customers, employees, investors, and policymakers.

Mark Sonders, RepTrak’s CEO, says the blend of D’Hers’ product/AI expertise and Hernandez-Blades’ governance and ESG insight “positions us to serve our clients with more accurate information, deeper trust, and greater value than ever before.”

With AI and product innovation accelerating across martech and analytics, RepTrak’s board moves are as much about market positioning as they are about leadership—signaling that the company intends to compete not just on data, but on the intelligence and trust behind it.

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The global travel spotlight is shifting, and the U.S. risks dimming its presence.
Enter Tiki’s Amplify International Program—a timely lifeline for Destination Marketing Organizations (DMOs) scrambling to stay visible after federal tourism funding took a historic hit.

A Funding Crisis in the Making

In July 2025, Congress slashed federal tourism matching funds from $100 million to just $20 million via the Rescissions Act—an 80% drop. Industry leaders warn the cuts will cripple America’s ability to market itself abroad, just as international competition heats up.
And the timing couldn’t be worse. The 2026 FIFA World Cup and 2028 Olympics will bring record-breaking waves of global travelers. Without robust international campaigns, U.S. destinations risk being outshined by more aggressive rivals in Europe, Asia, and beyond.

Tiki’s 3-for-1 Play

Tiki’s Amplify Program is designed to stretch every DMO marketing dollar to the max. For every $1 a destination invests in international media through Tiki, the company adds $2 in media value—essentially tripling campaign reach.

Jamie Claudio, SVP of Destination Strategy at Tiki, frames it bluntly: “With shrinking federal support, DMOs must adapt. Amplify ensures they can sustain the critical global visibility needed to attract international visitors—even under funding pressure.”

Beyond Just Ad Spend

The program isn’t just about bigger budgets—it’s about smarter campaigns. DMOs get:

• Fill the Funding Gap: Maintain and grow global reach despite cuts

• Triple the Campaign Value: Boost impact without inflating costs

• Full-Service Management: From campaign setup to optimization

• Localized Messaging: Ads tailored for language and culture fit

• Format Flexibility: AI-powered conversational units, immersive Lightbox ads, or native placements on 200+ premium global travel sites

Campaign eligibility covers all U.S. DMOs targeting international markets, with a minimum spend of $10,000 for Lightbox/Native ads or $25,000 for Envoy. Campaigns must run in FY 2025–2026.

The Bigger Picture

Tiki’s move aligns with a broader industry trend: tech-driven travel marketing stepping in where public funding pulls back. Similar models are emerging globally, with platforms offering co-investment, AI targeting, and premium inventory access to keep destinations competitive.

For DMOs, the Amplify Program isn’t just a patch—it’s a potential long-term play to stay relevant in a marketplace where visibility, timing, and cultural resonance make or break traveler interest.

As the U.S. rethinks how it sells itself abroad, programs like Tiki’s could be the difference between being a stopover… or the destination.

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New York–based PR powerhouse 5WPR, one of the largest independent agencies in the U.S., is expanding its services in Israel to give local companies a sharper edge in global markets. The move folds media buying, full-scale digital marketing, public relations, and integrated digital strategy into one package—custom-tailored for the country’s famously fast-moving business ecosystem.

Betting Big on a Small but Mighty Market

From Tel Aviv’s AI labs to Jerusalem’s healthtech startups, Israel has long punched above its weight in tech and innovation. But building world-class products isn’t enough; companies need equally world-class visibility to compete abroad.

“Israel is a hub for entrepreneurship and groundbreaking innovation,” said Ronn Torossian, Founder and Chairman of 5WPR. “By expanding our services here, we are doubling down on our belief in the region’s potential.”

It’s a calculated move: global investors are circling Israel’s tech sector despite geopolitical uncertainty, and competition for attention—especially in the U.S. and Europe—is fierce.

What’s New in the Toolkit

5WPR’s enhanced Israel playbook spans:

• Earned media to build credibility

• Paid campaigns for precision targeting

• Influencer marketing to tap niche audiences

• SEO and content creation for long-tail visibility

• Strategic partnerships to fast-track market entry

The firm says the focus will be on measurable results, with integrated campaigns designed to turn awareness into traction—and traction into market share.

Context: A Global PR Arms Race

The expansion puts 5WPR in closer competition with global agencies already embedded in the Israeli scene, such as Edelman and Weber Shandwick. But with over two decades of brand-building experience for clients across technology, consumer goods, and healthcare, 5WPR is positioning itself as a one-stop communications engine for scale-ups ready to go global.

For Israeli founders, the takeaway is clear: while product-market fit is critical, so is perception-market fit. And in a crowded global stage, having a PR partner who understands both the local culture and international playbook could be the difference between being a tech news headline—or just another LinkedIn post.

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If you’ve ever managed a large-scale localization project, you know the pain: shifting deadlines, disappearing resources, and priorities that change faster than your coffee cools. Now RWS wants to make those headaches a little more manageable.

The content solutions company has rolled out Smart Insights, a new feature for its cloud-based Trados language technology platform. It’s an LLM-powered virtual assistant designed to give localization managers answers to project questions—instantly, in plain language, and without the dreaded dashboard deep dive.

From Endless Dashboards to Instant Answers

Localization managers can now simply ask Trados questions like:

“Which projects are at risk this week? Where are we seeing delays?”

Or get forward-looking intelligence:

“Show me projected performance trends across all my clients for the next quarter. And highlight any upcoming translation tasks under 500 words that might impact delivery timelines.”

Instead of digging through spreadsheets or jumping between analytics tools, Smart Insights provides an immediate, context-aware answer.

“This changes the game for localization,” says Mark Lawyer, President of Regulated Industries & Linguistic AI at RWS. “We’re putting real-time project intelligence directly in the hands of the people who need it. No dashboards, no delays—just instant answers.”

Powered by Amazon Q in QuickSight

Smart Insights runs on Amazon Q in QuickSight, Amazon’s generative BI service. This means the tool can process vast amounts of project data, spot trends, and respond to nuanced queries—all within the familiar Trados environment.

The feature is included for Trados Enterprise subscribers at no extra cost. Trados Team and Trados Accelerate customers can access it via an optional upgrade.

The localization industry is under constant pressure to deliver more content, faster, and in more languages. Traditional project management tools tend to be reactive—by the time a risk is spotted, it’s often too late to prevent delays. Smart Insights flips that model, giving project managers predictive visibility before problems escalate.

By integrating directly into the platform where teams already work, RWS is sidestepping a common AI adoption barrier: tool fatigue. Instead of adding “just another AI platform,” Smart Insights becomes part of the existing workflow.

Competitive Context

With localization demand growing alongside global digital content output, rivals in the translation tech space—from Smartling to Memsource—are also investing in AI-powered project management features. RWS’s advantage may lie in the combination of human linguistic expertise, enterprise integration, and conversational AI that understands the nuance of language projects.

Vidsoul Wants to End Your AI Subscription Fatigue

If you’re a digital creator juggling three, four, or even five AI platforms just to get a project done, Vidsoul has a message for you: stop.

The company today officially launched what it’s calling the ultimate hub for AI-powered creativity—a single platform that integrates over a dozen top-tier AI models, including Pixverse v4.5, Google Veo 3, and Kling 2.1 Pro. The pitch is simple: skip the multiple logins, redundant subscriptions, and endless import-export loops, and get everything in one sleek interface.

“We’re not asking creators to pick an alternative; we’re inviting them to an upgrade,” says Vidsoul’s CEO.

A One-Stop Creative Powerhouse

Vidsoul’s value proposition rests on five pillars:

1. Comprehensive Multi-Model Ecosystem – Access industry-leading video generators like Kling, Vidu AI, and Pixverse, alongside image models like Ideogram and Flux, plus Vidsoul’s own proprietary engine.

2. Versatile Input-to-Output Workflows – Text-to-video, image-to-video, text-to-image, and a “video extend” feature that breaks the 20-second limit common in other tools.

3. Speed and Accessibility – Clips generated in under a minute, free tier without watermarks, and high-res up to 1080p.

4. Built-In Effects and Templates – Over 30 genre filters and physics-based effects for instant professional polish.

5. Future-Proof Integration – Immediate adoption of new AI models as they drop.

Why It Matters

AI tools are advancing at breakneck speed, but that pace has created a headache for creators—constant subscriptions, incompatible formats, and the feeling of spending more time managing tools than actually creating. Vidsoul’s approach not only solves this but also aims to future-proof workflows by ensuring instant access to the latest breakthroughs.

With a generous free tier and a commercial-friendly paid plan, the platform is targeting both solo artists and professional agencies. The result? A more efficient, cost-effective, and unified way to produce stunning visuals without sacrificing quality or choice.

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Interpublic Group’s New AI Partner Wants to Predict Your Next Move—Before You Make It

In a marketing world obsessed with data, Interpublic Group (NYSE: IPG) is taking things a step further—into the realm of prediction. The global marketing giant has inked a strategic partnership with Aaru, an AI and technology company specializing in simulating human behavior to forecast how audiences will respond to campaigns before they go live.

The move adds a crystal ball to IPG’s marketing arsenal, pairing Aaru’s multi-agent simulation platform with IPG’s own Acxiom-powered identity resolution and Interact platform. The goal: test and refine brand ideas, creative assets, influencer activations, and corporate messaging—long before a single ad dollar is spent.

“Combined with our exceptional Acxiom data asset and Interact platform, our partnership with Aaru will provide a distinct competitive advantage,” said Philippe Krakowsky, CEO of Interpublic Group.

AI as a Creative Accelerator, Not a Replacement

While AI in marketing often sparks fears of creative displacement, Aaru’s founder Cameron Fink insists the tech is there to amplify human creativity, not replace it. The system can run rapid-fire simulations on audience sentiment, revealing what resonates, what falls flat, and where adjustments can deliver stronger ROI.

And unlike many AI models that rely on scraped, unlicensed internet content, Aaru trains exclusively on licensed data—aligning with IPG’s ethics-first stance on data use.

From Reactive to Proactive Marketing

The technology has already been quietly deployed in financial services, healthcare, and consumer packaged goods campaigns, with IPG agencies reporting stronger performance from early-stage simulations. Predictive modeling will now be integrated directly into IPG’s Interact campaign design modules, making it a standard tool across its client base.

The partnership also comes with perks: exclusive early access for IPG clients to Aaru’s new tech developments, plus the creation of a Simulation Studio for immersive, in-person demonstrations. Imagine a war room where creative concepts are stress-tested against simulated audience reactions before anyone presses “publish.”

Why It Matters

Marketers have long relied on post-launch data to tweak campaigns—meaning costly missteps could run for weeks before being corrected. With predictive simulations, IPG aims to shift that process forward, enabling real-time optimization and potentially slashing wasted ad spend.

In a space where WPP, Omnicom, and Publicis are also racing to integrate advanced AI into creative workflows, this partnership is IPG’s shot at claiming the high ground. If it works as promised, Aaru’s simulations could become the new norm for testing campaign viability—making guesswork in marketing feel like a relic from the Mad Men era.

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Columbus Marketing Experts Bets Big on AI-First Search—And They Want SMBs to Come Along

Traditional search optimization is starting to look… well, traditional. Columbus Marketing Experts, a fast-growing digital marketing firm, has announced its new AI Search Visibility Program, designed to help small and mid-sized businesses secure prime placement in AI-powered search results—before rivals even realize the market’s shifted.

The logic is simple but urgent: in an era where more consumers are asking ChatGPT, Gemini, and Perplexity for answers instead of typing into Google, the first companies surfaced by AI could enjoy months—or even years—of low-competition visibility in their niche. Miss that early wave, and your brand risks vanishing from the AI-generated spotlight altogether.

“The integration of AI into search engines is not just a trend; it’s a transformative shift,” said Neil Colvin, CEO of Columbus Marketing Experts. “We want our clients not just visible, but leading.”

From SEO to “AIO”

Where traditional SEO chases algorithms and keyword density, Columbus is aiming squarely at AI’s generative logic. The company says it has developed proprietary in-house tools—built and deployed at speeds “competitors can’t match”—to optimize how AI platforms catalog and recommend businesses.

The program focuses on early positioning, structured data optimization, and content strategies that AI models use to source and summarize results. For SMBs, this could mean beating deep-pocketed competitors who may be slower to pivot from old-school search strategies.

Riding the AI Wave Before It Peaks

The move reflects a broader industry reality: SEO isn’t dead, but it’s evolving fast. AI-powered search often provides direct, conversational answers without the user ever seeing a list of clickable links. For businesses, that means visibility is no longer about Page 1—it’s about being the answer.

Columbus Marketing Experts—already known for aggressive growth, stellar client reviews, and even an industry award in its first six months—believes the window for low-competition dominance is closing quickly.

Their pitch to SMBs is clear: invest now, and your business could become the default recommendation for AI-driven searches in your category. Wait too long, and you could be optimizing for a search paradigm consumers are already leaving behind.

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The Marketing Club (TMC) has announced a partnership with SMK, a leading digital training provider, to expand professional development opportunities for marketers across Australia and New Zealand.

Under the agreement, TMC members will gain discounted access to SMK’s flagship courses — including Marketing AI, Meta and Google Ads, LinkedIn for B2B, and Email Strategy — along with early access to whitepapers, trend briefings, and on-demand learning. Co-branded events and live sessions will be shaped directly by member feedback.

Addressing the Professional Development Gap

TMC, which has hosted over 85 events and built a community of 12,500+ marketers in three years, recently found that 85% of its members struggle to keep up with professional development, citing time and relevance as the biggest barriers.

“TMC members want to keep learning but often don’t know where to start,” said Chanel Clark, TMC Founder. “SMK’s content is clear, focused, and built for real-world marketing — that’s what makes this partnership so exciting.”

Flexible, Real-World Learning

Founded in 2010, SMK trains more than 10,000 marketing and communications professionals annually. Its courses are designed for practical application rather than theory overload.

“Marketers already have a lot on their plates, so training often gets pushed down the list,” said James Fitzgerald, SMK Executive Director of Programming. “By teaming up with TMC, we’re delivering learning that’s both doable and directly applicable.”

The first courses and events from the partnership will roll out to all TMC members in the coming weeks.

Author - mediaweek

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