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Bitcoin’s Collapse is the Theme of TransparentBusiness’ Advertising Campaign

TransparentBusiness launched this week a new advertising campaign focusing on the collapse of Bitcoin. A large ad features a gold bitcoin engulfed in flames and the text “Investments in Bitcoin can flame out real fast.”

The ad brings into focus the recent implosion of the world’s most famous crypto-currency. In 2017, Bitcoin rose almost 2,000 percent, before starting its precipitous slide in mid-December. By this week, it’s lost two-thirds of its peak value, causing massive financial losses to many investors.  The Justice Department has recently launched a criminal investigation into illegal trading practices to manipulate the price of Bitcoin.

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Alex Konanykhin
Alex Konanykhin

“Bitcoin caused a new Gold Rush, but failed to become a reliable investment,” said Alex Konanykhin, CEO of TransparentBusiness.

Alex added, “The good news is that the tech industry provides for safer and much more profitable opportunities, with the return on investment occasionally topping one million percent. We enumerate reasons to believe that TransparentBusiness has the potential of providing a 90,000% return on investment. We seek to inform accredited investors of the risks and opportunities related to TransparentBusiness, now that many of them are searching for better alternatives to investing in cryptocurrencies.”

The advertising campaign is designed to facilitate a $25 million round of financing conducted by TransparentBusiness under SEC Rule 506c which allows for “general advertising and broad solicitation” of an investment opportunity but limits the opportunity to so-called “accredited investors” which include individuals with net worth of over one million dollars or annual income over $200,000.

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“Our objective is to achieve dominance in the category of business transparency,” explains Alex Konanykhin “and our market is enormous, as any type of computer-based work may be monitored and coordinated using TransparentBusiness.”

Alibaba Group Opens Office in Malaysia

Announces the launch of Malaysia Week in July to promote the sale of quality Malaysian products and tourism to China consumers

Alibaba Group has opened its national office in Malaysia. This marks a new chapter in the company’s deepening strategic cooperation with Malaysia, which is the first eWTP hub outside of China.

“China and Malaysia have enjoyed a profound friendship and flourishing trade over the centuries. The robust numbers we see about our bilateral trade proves the strength of our economic relations. The launch of Alibaba’s Malaysia office is yet another step to boost a mutually beneficial cooperation between China and Malaysia”

Located in the heart of Kuala Lumpur at The Vertical Bangsar South, the new office signifies Alibaba Group’s continued endeavour to bolster the technology capability of Malaysian SMEs and young entrepreneurs, provide support and platforms to assist them to drive exports, as well as offering extensive training programs to help them take advantage of digital innovations and trade opportunities.

“Alibaba’s focus is on three areas when we partner with Malaysia as well as other countries – to digitize our local partners and empower small businesses and young people to go global. Over the past 30 years, only large corporations have benefited from globalisation. Imagine if we can support 60 million small business around the world; this is Alibaba’s vision of an inclusive and sustainable economy,” said Mr. Ma at the Alibaba office opening ceremony in Kuala Lumpur.

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“Working closely with the Malaysian government, we will support and empower as many small businesses and young people as possible to use technology to become local kings and benefit from globalisation. This is the beginning of our story in Malaysia and I think Alibaba’s story will be long and we will make this story together,” he added.

New Office is Designed to Engage with Existing Local Partners

Serving as a ‘one-stop solution centre’ for local businesses, the country office is designed to engage with existing local partners, help Malaysian businesses identify global cross-border trade opportunities, as well as to support the country’s technology innovation through cloud computing services.

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“I would like to congratulate Alibaba for the opening of its national office in Malaysia. We consider this a shining symbol of China-Malaysia friendship that is based on mutual respect and benefits that augurs well for the cooperation on the part of governments, businesses and people from both countries. We look forward to the opportunities this partnership will bring to Malaysian SMEs and I am confident that the eWTP together with the Digital Free Trade Zone (DFTZ), will encourage more Malaysian SMEs to participate in ecommerce and increase their exports to other countries in Asia and beyond.” said Minister of Finance Malaysia, Yang Berhormat Lim Guan Eng, told guests at the ceremony.

“China and Malaysia have enjoyed a profound friendship and flourishing trade over the centuries. The robust numbers we see about our bilateral trade proves the strength of our economic relations. The launch of Alibaba’s Malaysia office is yet another step to boost a mutually beneficial cooperation between China and Malaysia,” said Mr. Bai Tian, China’s Ambassador to Malaysia, at the ceremony.

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In November last year, Alibaba successfully launched its first international eHub in Malaysia under the eWTP initiative, with an emphasis on facilitating exports for Malaysian SMEs and creating the infrastructure to support global trade with services encompassing e-commerce, logistics, cloud computing, mobile payment and talent training.

Since then, various initiatives have been undertaken by Alibaba Group in Malaysia in order to build inclusive and innovative global trading technology infrastructure for local SMEs, including the establishment of Alibaba’s first regional e-fulfilment hub in the KLIA Aeropolis DFTZ Park and the establishment of Alibaba Cloud’s internet data centre in Malaysia – Malaysia’s first global public cloud platform.

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Alibaba Group Announced Launch of ‘Malaysia Week’

During the opening ceremony, the Company also announced the launch of ‘Malaysia Week’, a special online promotion initiative that seeks to attract Chinese consumers to buy all-things Malaysian from the 6-12 July 2018. The Malaysia Week campaign is set to showcase an array of ‘Must-see’‘Must-eat’, and ‘Must-experience’ Malaysian products and tourism across Alibaba’s platforms.

“Malaysia Week is the first time Alibaba has promoted one country for an entire week. This symbolizes our commitment to introduce and promote Malaysian products, services, culture and tourism in China. We hope to continue to host promotional activities such as this in the long term to enable local Malaysian businesses to expand their international exports in China and the rest of the world,” Mr. Ma said.

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Clarabridge Named a Leader In AI-Based Text Analytics

Report States That Clarabridge Offers A Highly Differentiated Emotion, Effort And Intent Analysis

Clarabridge, Inc., the leading provider of Customer Experience Management (CEM) solutions for the world’s top brands, announced it has been named a Leader in the Forrester Research, Inc. June 2018 report, The Forrester Wave™: AI-Based Text Analytics Platforms, Q2 2018.

“Clarabridge offers a highly differentiated emotion, effort, and intent analysis, while most of its competitors still mainly offer sentiment analysis.”

According to Forrester, Clarabridge’s solution demonstrated “the highest accuracy on an untrained demo data set among the solutions we evaluated.” The report also stated that Clarabridge offers “a highly differentiated emotion, effort, and intent analysis, while most of its competitors still mainly offer sentiment analysis.”

In addition, Forrester states that “a majority of reference customers attest that Clarabridge’s product and professional services ‘exceed’ or ‘significantly exceed’ their expectations.”

Forrester’s AI-Based Text Analytics Platforms Q2 2018 report evaluated the eight most significant AI-powered Text Analytics vendors based on 22 criteria covering current offering, strategy and market presence. Clarabridge received the highest score in the current offering category.

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Earlier this year, Clarabridge announced enhancements to its platform including the Clarabridge Effort Score, which enables brands to measure and track the level of effort their customers are experiencing at every touchpoint. Additionally, Clarabridge expanded its machine learning-powered customer intent detection capabilities to include automatic identification of promoters and detractors, enabling companies to identify a total of 17 different sentence types.

Mark Bishof
Mark Bishof

“We are proud to be recognized for our text analytics capabilities in Forrester’s Wave Report,” said Mark Bishof, CEO of Clarabridge.

Mark added, “We have invested more than 10 years building the most advanced AI-powered customer experience analytics solution, and we believe being named a Leader in this report affirms Clarabridge’s status as the gold standard in AI-powered text analytics for our industry. Clarabridge is committed to innovation and to helping the world’s leading businesses gain actionable insights from every customer interaction. There is nothing more humbling and motivating to us than to hear our customers express that our software and services continue to exceed their expectations.”

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JJUMPP Announces $3 Million Venture Round to Accelerate Growth of its Small Business Marketing Platform

JJUMPP focuses on small businesses who don’t have time to manage multiple accounts across various search engines and social media channels

JJUMPP, a SaaS company that offers a powerful digital marketing platform for small businesses, has completed a $3 million venture funding round from Arthur Ventures. JJUMPP’s marketing platform gives business owners the ability to automate the management and monitoring of customer feedback and engagement, driving more traffic, referrals, and sales to their business. It also saves time by aggregating all the different platforms into a single user interface and automating much of the process.

Chad Ingram, CEO
Chad Ingram, CEO

“Arthur Ventures is thrilled to partner with JJUMPP at this important juncture in the company’s journey,” said James Burgum, Partner at Arthur Ventures.

James added, “The opportunity to empower small business through stronger online presence management is growing exponentially, and JJUMPP is uniquely delivering the right solution to SMBs at the right time in the right way.”

“Arthur Ventures is such a great fit for us. They understand us and they fully support our vision of empowering small business owners,” said JJUMPP CEO Chad Ingram.

Chad added, “This new funding will give us the opportunity to continue to fuel our growth and expand what we are already doing to a much larger audience.”

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Arthur Ventures was also an investor in Infusionsoft, where several JJUMPP team members worked previously, including Chief Revenue Officer Jeff Mask, and Chief Financial Officer Hal Halladay.

“This process was seamless and smooth,” said Halladay, “It accelerated everything to have a previous relationship of trust with James and Arthur Ventures.”

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JJUMPP focuses on small businesses who don’t have time to manage multiple accounts across various search engines and social media channels, or who are overwhelmed by all the available options. At the core of the business is a strong desire to help businesses owners grow their business.

Chad concluded, “We love helping small businesses and have seen the impact our product makes. They are growing their business and using JJUMPP to do it.”

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Pitney Bowes Announces Michael Monahan as New COO

Pitney Bowes Inc., a global technology company that provides commerce solutions in the areas of shipping and mailing, data, and ecommerce, announced that Michael Monahan, Executive Vice President and Chief Operating Officer, and Abby F. Kohnstamm, Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, are retiring effective 9 July 2018, and 1 July 2018, respectively.

Bill Borrelle Named CMO

Mr. Monahan joined Pitney Bowes in 1988 and held numerous leadership positions throughout the Company with increasing responsibilities. In February 2015, Monahan was appointed Chief Operating Officer, where he spearheaded the implementation of the Company’s enterprise business platform – the most significant transformational project in the past two decades – and led the strategy and growth plans for the Pitney Bowes Commerce Cloud and Pitney Bowes Global Financial Services, the Company’s financing, payments, and leasing business. In this role, he also was responsible for overseeing the Company’s Corporate Development initiatives including the acquisition of Newgistics and most recently, the divestiture of the Company’s production mail business. Prior to that, Monahan served as Chief Financial Officer from 2008 to February 2017.

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Marc B. Lautenbach
Marc B. Lautenbach

“For 30 years, Mike has served Pitney Bowes with unwavering dedication, passion and commitment,” said Marc B. Lautenbach, President and Chief Executive Officer.

Marc added, “He not only played a vital role in helping Pitney Bowes become the company it is today, his leadership and strategic oversight in helping transform the Company are critical to our long-term success. Mike has left an indelible mark on our company and I want to thank him for his tremendous contributions over the years, his outstanding leadership, and his track record of success. Most importantly, I want to thank Mike for his counsel and partnership over the past five years.”

The Company does not plan to replace Mr. Monahan.

Ms. Kohnstamm joined Pitney Bowes in June 2013 as Executive Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer and is responsible for all of Pitney Bowes marketing and communications worldwide as well as citizenship and philanthropy. During her tenure, Kohnstamm built a globally integrated marketing and communications function and created a new brand strategy, identity and architecture that repositioned Pitney Bowes as a technology company and leader in enabling modern commerce.

In 2015, Kohnstamm led the development and launch of “Craftsman of Commerce,” the Company’s first advertising and digital marketing campaign in more than 20 years. In addition, she revitalized demand generation, social media, and the product launch process. Most recently, Kohnstamm created a new digital ecosystem on pitneybowes.com by moving from disparate global websites onto one content-rich and service-oriented platform to fuel ecommerce, drive revenue and improve client service.

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“We knew that bringing Abby to Pitney Bowes as CMO five years ago would lead to great outcomes, and we were right,” said Lautenbach. “Abby has worked tirelessly to create a world-class marketing and communications organization with extraordinary talent. She has established a strategic voice for our company and changed the perceptions of Pitney Bowes among our clients, shareholders, and employees. She has had a significant impact on our business from the very beginning and we are very fortunate to have benefited from her leadership at Pitney Bowes.”

The Company also announced that Bill Borrelle has been named Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer, responsible for marketing worldwide. Borrelle joined Pitney Bowes in 2013 and currently leads the Company’s digital channel where he is responsible for developing this channel to improve the client experience and drive sales.

In addition, Borrelle oversees the Company’s brand strategy, digital marketing, and marketing analytics, and has led numerous marketing disciplines throughout his career. Before joining Pitney Bowes, Borrelle was the Chief Executive Officer of mcgarrybowen New York, a full-service advertising agency, for eight years. Before that, Borrelle was a Senior Vice President at Digitas. Bill holds a B.S. from Villanova University and an MBA from The Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania.

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MyAlerts Acquired by Think3

MyAlerts technology empowers customers through innovative, personalized e-commerce marketing

Think3, has acquired MyAlerts Inc., an e-commerce marketing platform used by top retail and consumer sites to capture purchase intent, driving consumers back to sites at a rate of 5-10 times and converting browsers into buyers.

Top sites, including Home Depot, JCPenney, Target and Cars.com, utilize MyAlerts to offer consumers automated alerts — from back in stock to registry and price alerts. Real-time, personalized alerts allow customers to tune into and increase engagement with sites, brands, categories and products and deliver greater relevance to customers.

MyAlerts augments campaign marketing, focused on what retailers want to sell, with custom-designed marketing, focused on what customers want to buy. The platform and alert options use change events on a site, such as price drops, product availability or new products added, and turns them into micro-marketing events.

This helps retailers solve top customer experience issues and delivers 100 percent relevant alerts to their site visitors, taking email marketing and challenges like cart abandonment to the next level. MyAlerts’ results demonstrate the impact with:

  • 11 million users who have active alerts
  • $1.4 billion in future purchase intent tracked
  • 80% average open rates
  • $7.23 average revenue generated per alert

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Now as part of the Think3 portfolio, MyAlerts and Think3 will continue to invest in customer success while ensuring customers continue to receive the highest level of customer service, product delivery and technical support. MyAlerts will also become a key component of the Think3 Prime program — enabling customers to utilize software across more than 70 other portfolio companies at no additional charge.

Andy Tryba
Andy Tryba

Andy Tryba, Think3 founder, with more than 20 years of experience managing global companies for growth and profitability, is the new CEO of MyAlerts.

Andy added, “This is an exciting time in e-commerce, marketing and personalization. Trailblazers are propelling businesses by tapping into the power of technology and AI-driven personalization,” said Tryba.

Andy concluded, “MyAlerts sets itself apart as an innovator in a world where multitasking mobile shoppers and online consumer options expand daily. Personalized experiences are the present and future of the retail and consumer markets. We are delighted to welcome MyAlerts to the Think3 portfolio.”

Accenture Chosen to Help KPN Enhance the Customer Experience of Its iTV Video Services

Accenture Video Solution 6 to serve as video platform that enables the telecom provider to extend its leading position in the digital video and services market

Accenture is helping KPN enhance the customer experience by providing the telecommunications company with the Accenture Video Solution (AVS) – a hybrid internet protocol television and over-the-top platform. This is for the delivery of video and related services. The five-year agreement enables KPN to continue to scale its video business while providing new capabilities to accelerate innovation in an increasingly competitive market.

“By making strategic investments in its digital video business, KPN is better equipped to deliver innovation that in turn provides a solid foundation for its core service proposition while enabling expansion into new revenue models.”

The agreement builds upon the success of KPN iTV, an interactive digital video service that Accenture helped KPN launch in 2012. KPN iTV enables customers to manage their viewing experience via a smartphone or tablet, whether streaming live television, playing back previously aired items, accessing on-demand content, recording and playing programs, viewing electronic program guides or searching for compelling content.

Under the new agreement, Accenture Digital Video will implement and run for KPN the latest version of its digital video platform, AVS 6. AVS 6’s web-scale solution enables KPN to continuously innovate on the platform, providing data-driven, micro-service capabilities to test, build, and scale highly personalized experiences that promote customer loyalty while optimizing costs across KPN’s entire business.

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Sef Tuma
Sef Tuma

The AVS platform provides a single point to manage all back-end processes for video services – including customer relationship management, BSS, set-top-box configuration and management, device management, advertising, reporting, advanced analytics, content acquisition, promotion and distribution management, among other processes – enabling the easy and quick integration of content and additional third-party services.

“To compete in today’s digitally disrupted environment, communications providers must give their customers first-class products, and that means providing new and highly relevant experiences, content, services and offers when users need them most,” said Sef Tuma, global lead for Accenture Digital Video.

Sef added, “By making strategic investments in its digital video business, KPN is better equipped to deliver innovation that in turn provides a solid foundation for its core service proposition while enabling expansion into new revenue models.”

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Ad Veteran Bob Ranew Joins Clean As Co-Creative Director; Will Enhance Brand Experience Practice

Clean, an award-winning integrated branding agency, announced that advertising executive Bob Ranew will join as co-creative director, effective 9 July. Bob will oversee the agency’s creative offering along with Co-Creative Director Glen Fellman and support the agency’s heightened focus on immersive brand experiences. Bob will report directly to Partner and Chief Creative Officer Scott Scaggs.

Bob Ranew
Bob Ranew

Bob joins Clean from Raleigh-based creative agency Baldwin&, where he was an executive creative director. Bob co-founded Baldwin& in 2009 and helped build it into a successful creative shop with innovative work lauded multiple times by Ad Age and the 4A’s. A native of N.C., he began his career at Durham, N.C.-based advertising agency McKinney (1992-2007) and has had a singular impact in putting the Triangle’s creative advertising industry on the map.

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Scott Scaggs
Scott Scaggs

“Bob is one of the most awarded and inventive creative minds in the business today, whether it be his bearded founder look-alike street teams in ‘Find Your Burt’ for Burt’s Bees or creating The World’s Tastiest Coupon for Krispy Kreme,” says Scott Scaggs.

Scott added, “Given his track record, he was the perfect choice to help in creating more powerful brand experiences for our clients.”

“I look forward to working with Scott, Glen, and all of Team Clean to do great work,” says Bob.

Bob added, “With its integrated strategic approach and creative expertise, Clean is well-positioned to capitalize on this emerging trend.”

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Jeremy Holden
Jeremy Holden

Adds Jeremy Holden, President and Chief Strategy Officer at Clean, “Having worked side by side with him previously, I can attest that Bob is ‘ridiculously’ talented and will be a tremendous addition to our agency on its current rapid growth trajectory.”

In his storied career spanning 25-plus years, Bob has delivered award-winning work for national companies such as Audi of America, Krispy Kreme, Burt’s Bees, Cree LED Lighting, Red Hat, BMW Golf, Kioti Tractors, and Long John Silver’s. His recognitions read as a “who’s who” of the advertising world, with key awards and honors including The One Show, the Clios, D&AD, Cannes, Communication Arts, and The Art Directors Club of New York.

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Cleanshelf’s SaaS Spending Control and Optimization Platform Adds Cross-Department Support

New capabilities allow Cleanshelf customers to share SaaS costs between departments, recycle SaaS licenses, and estimate future SaaS spend.

Cleanshelf Inc., a leading SaaS spending control and optimization platform, announced the launch of functionality designed to help organizations better track, optimize and benchmark SaaS spend across departments. The platform, which creates immediate ROI improvement for customers deploying SaaS applications, now supports splitting subscriptions costs for SaaS apps by department and is based on actual employee usage data. The insights, which are automatically pulled from over 800 SaaS industry vendors using Cleanshelf’s proprietary connectors and integrations, means customers can reuse or reassign licenses between departments without managing expense or budget assignment. The platform automatically organizes spend by cost center and helps both department level and organization-wide budgeting.

Cleanshelf
Cleanshelf

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With SaaS spend eclipsing $10,000 annually per employee, companies need a solution to rein in out-of-control spending and to address the 30%-40% waste stemming from poor vendor management and account rationalization practices. Optimizing cross-department SaaS spend is key to efficiently managing subscription SaaS applications, particularly in larger organizations. This enhanced level of spend detail means finance and technology leaders can effortlessly track usage and spend patterns at the individual department level while letting department heads use the detail to better manage technology spend and budget forecasts.

Enabling the departmental insight is the platform’s ability to track usage of subscription apps by the individual employee. Not only does this support spending control and optimization at the individual level (by clearly identifying unused or underused licenses), but also produce findings on a department level and delivers rolled up company insights. The functionality is fully automated and requires no manual input from customers. Cleanshelf’s platform simply leverages existing SaaS vendor integrations, while securely pulling employee and department information from standard HRIS and ERP systems like NetSuite or Zenefits.

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Mateja Rajter
Mateja Rajter

“When discussing the next frontier of SaaS spending control and optimization with customers like ServiceRocketDynamic SignalDrawbridge and Revinate, the need for cross-department support always surfaced. If SaaS applications are introduced bottom-up at the department level, the economy of scale is rarely realized. If introduced top-down, adoption levels are uneven between departments, reducing collaboration and delivering low ROI,” said Mateja Rajter, VP of Product at Cleanshelf.

Mateja added, “We’re excited to offer a solution to bridge the best of both approaches to SaaS procurement and help our customers get the most technology bang for their subscription buck.”

Matt Armstrong
Matt Armstrong

“Using cutting-edge software technology is the key competitive advantage of fast-growing companies and the finance function is nowadays heavily involved in technology decisions,” said Matt Armstrong who heads finance at Revinate, a hospitality technology provider from San Francisco.

Matt added, “We plan to use the new cross-department support in Cleanshelf to help department owners fully embrace modern technology stacks while giving finance full visibility on department attribution for shared SaaS vendors.”

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