Introducing Holler, a technology company that creates and delivers useful, entertaining, expressive, original visual content that adds texture and emotion to messaging environments and digital communication. The company, formerly known as Emogi, announced a new brand identity, created in partnership with branding and design company Dear Future, and an integration with MagicLab to bring animated content to 425 million users across the world’s largest dating app, Badoo.
The team at Holler is made up of digital animators, technologists, media industry veterans, and a millennial CEO who grew up in a post-social media world. They aspire to continue building a company for a new generation of people online, and those coming into their own online for the first time. It’s a generation that spends as much time sharing content in digital environments as they do communicating in physical environments, but have trouble accurately expressing their emotions within the current confines of messaging. Holler aims to solve that challenge.
Holler’s partnership with MagicLab marks the first significant integration under the new brand and points a way forward towards the company’s elevated vision. Emotion-focused visual content paired with intelligent search and recommendation tools will help millions of Badoo users have meaningful and vibrant conversations. As a part of the deal, Holler’s full portfolio of original visual content will be available on Badoo to help users better connect.
“Helping people express themselves authentically is at the heart of everything we do,” said Dominic Gallello, CMO of Badoo. “We are thrilled to partner with Holler, which shares our vision of elevating the messaging experience and building new ways of connecting and communicating online. The Holler integration allows our users to enhance their conversations with fun, animated content in a seamless way that also aligns with our commitment to top-notch technological capabilities.”
Messaging is the most-used feature on digital devices today and is fundamental to user experience within dating, chat, productivity, and gaming applications. Holler believes that an untapped opportunity exists for advertisers, marketers, and platform developers to innovate and reach always-on users in new and exciting ways. Holler works with a number of platforms across many different industries to deliver 170 million content recommendations each day, a significant increase from the 20 million each day at the beginning of 2019. The growing AI research team at Holler hopes to accelerate this expansion over the coming months by continuing to make progress on better understanding intent and emotion within conversations.
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“Given the massive opportunity that exists within messaging, it was the right time to take a fresh look at our brand and make it better align with our expanded vision,” said Travis Montaque, CEO of Holler. “We want to be thoughtful about how to build an ecosystem around messaging – to help people better express themselves and enrich their conversations and to help brands reach consumers where they are with fun and sophisticated animated content. We’re very excited to build on the success of Emogi and share our Holler vision with the world.”
Holler’s in-house content studio also expanded over the last two months. The growing team is essential in helping to create original content and bolster partnerships with brands in the world of CPG, QSR, entertainment, and retail. The studio aims to create visual content that is true to an entertainer, artist, or brand, and delivered within the context of a conversation.
“Working with Holler is one of our first forays into the messaging space, which we’re very excited to dig into further,” said Gary Arora, Global LaunchPad Lead, Mars Incorporated. “We saw incredible results from our first campaign, garnering 42 million views and converting 61,000 brand advocates across the platform. We are thrilled to be part of our customer conversations in an authentic way, and at the perfect moment in time. When folks are talking about needing an afternoon pick me up, Snickers will be there.”
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