Epicenter Experience is Stagwell Marketing Cloud’s 3rd Acquisition in 2022, Adding Mobile and Location Data to its Evolving Data and Insights Stack

NEW YORK and BOSTON, Oct. 19, 2022 /PRNewswire/ — Stagwell (NASDAQ: STGW), the challenger network built to transform marketing, has acquired Epicenter Experience (Epicenter), an enterprise software company that leverages mobile and location data to map and sequence complex consumer behavior patterns. Epicenter will become part of the Stagwell Marketing Cloud (SMC), a proprietary suite of software-as-a-service (SaaS) and data-as-a-service (DaaS) products built for in-house marketing teams.
“We have strong momentum building around the Stagwell Marketing Cloud’s insights and analytics capabilities, and we’re excited to add Epicenter’s location-focused platform as another supplement to our data stack,” said Stagwell Chairman and CEO Mark Penn. “With this AI-powered technology, we can deliver more comprehensive data intelligence to brands, helping them more effectively drive customer acquisition and retention goals.”
“With The People Platform we’ve built a tool that provides contextual awareness and behavioral understanding on a granular level, providing our clients with a connective tissue that they’ve come to view as a ‘currency service.’ We look forward to enhancing the SMC with this technology that can be applied within any industry,” said Epicenter Experience CEO and Co-founder Paul Krasinski. “Through these direct-from-consumer learnings we empower our customers across retail, healthcare, consumer goods, sports, entertainment and more to create more valuable, more personalized connections to their audiences at scale.”
SMC has been actively investing in emerging technologies and data-focused platforms as part of its strategy to serve in-house teams with transformative marketing technology capabilities. This is the SMC’s third acquisition in the second half of 2022, following Apollo Program in July and Maru Group in October. Epicenter will continue to be led by its current leadership team including Co-founders CEO Paul Krasinski and CFO Lynne Lipinsky.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Stagwell is the challenger network built to transform marketing. We deliver scaled creative performance for the world’s most ambitious brands, connecting culture-moving creativity with leading-edge technology to harmonize the art and science of marketing. Led by entrepreneurs, our 13,000+ specialists in 34+ countries are unified under a single purpose: to drive effectiveness and improve business results for their clients. Join us at www.stagwellglobal.com.
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SMC’s second acquisition integrates SaaS platform linking global behavioral, transactional and attitudinal data

Maru brings new, global capabilities to SMC. Maru’s SaaS solution, HUB, is a fully scalable survey platform that allows in-house marketers to analyze behavioral, transactional, and attitudinal data all in one place. With tens of millions of survey completes processed a year, the Maru/HUB platform manages research from ad-hoc studies to global trackers. Partnerships with 14 vetted sample partners worldwide allow Maru to connect clients with expertly profiled respondents.
“Stagwell is pleased to add this sophisticated ‘research as a service’ partner,” said Mark Penn, chairman, and CEO, Stagwell. “Maru will be a great addition to our Stagwell Marketing Cloud and round out our research offering from full-service analytical to do it yourself. Maru is research built for enterprise scale but in simple, convenient and affordable ways.”
“From full service to self-service, SMC believes marketers need to integrate connected technologies to stay ahead and drive business growth in the modern digital economy. This acquisition demonstrates our commitment to that belief,” said Elspeth Rollert, chief marketing officer, SMC. “We pride ourselves on a commitment to entrepreneurs like Ged Parton who are building the future of connected brand ecosystems, and we’re thrilled to have the Maru Group team join SMC.”
Maru strengthens SMC’s global, blue-chip client list and presence including Buenos Aires, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Southampton, Toronto, and Vancouver.
“Maru’s suite provides real-time access to insight and results, bringing into one ecosystem adaptive interpretation of behavioral, transactional, and attitudinal consumer data,” said Ged Parton, CEO, Maru Group. “By joining SMC, we’re scaling our services to some of the fastest-growing brands worldwide and translating our belief that understanding the intersection between behavior and emotion is critical to establishing the strongest possible consumer connection to drive better business results.”
Maru joins SMC as its second acquisition amid an accelerated focus on technology-based marketing innovation from parent company Stagwell. In July 2022, SMC acquired Apollo Program.
SMC’s leadership team is growing with the appointment of former Accenture Applied Intelligence Practice lead Mansoor Basha as chief technology officer. Mansoor joins Matthew Lochner, managing director; Abe Geiger, chief product officer; and Elspeth Rollert, chief marketing officer.
Products across the suite are picking up momentum, too, as marketing professionals race to integrate technology. In August 2022, ARound – a shared augmented reality solution for live events – launched in partnership with the Minnesota Twins, bringing the world’s first stadium-level shared A.R. experience to life. Further, PRophet, Stagwell’s AI-powered tool for predicting the success of media pitches, has launched “2.0” enhanced by partnerships with PeakMetrics, Podchaser, and The Harris Poll.
Stephens Inc. served as advisor to Maru Group. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Stagwell is the challenger network built to transform marketing. We deliver scaled creative performance for the world’s most ambitious brands, connecting culture-moving creativity with leading-edge technology to harmonize the art and science of marketing. Led by entrepreneurs, our 13,000+ specialists in 34+ countries are unified under a single purpose: to drive effectiveness and improve business results for their clients. Join us at www.stagwellglobal.com.
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Originally released on
Apollo Program will be part of the Stagwell Marketing Cloud, a suite of SaaS and DaaS tools built for in-house marketers
NEW YORK, July 18, 2022 – Stagwell (NASDAQ: STGW) today announced the acquisition of Apollo Program, a real-time, AI-powered SaaS platform that uncovers consumer, creative and contextual insights for scaled modern marketing. Apollo will be integrated with Stagwell’s data and insights unification tool, Consumer Understanding and Engagement (CUE), and is the first acquisition made by the Stagwell Marketing Cloud.
Apollo’s enterprise technology tools will connect and enrich Stagwell’s expansive first-party data universe with millions of behavioral, transactional, and location-based data points to help marketers understand consumer behaviors, motivations, and states of mind. The integration of Apollo with CUE will automate workstreams to translate insights into effective campaigns across messaging, content strategy, and media.
“Marketers today need technology that helps insights, content, and media perform together at scale,” said Mark Penn, chairman and CEO, Stagwell. “Apollo is a great example of how Stagwell can uniquely use technology to support modern marketing. We’re excited to strengthen CUE and welcome Apollo to the Stagwell Marketing Cloud.”

“Most data tools focus on media campaign creation and targeting – Apollo provides unified knowledge of consumer habits, behaviors and creative preferences to aid all kinds of decision-making,” said Jim Caruso, co-founder and CEO, Apollo. “Apollo is proud to join Stagwell as it further develops technology solutions to leverage data across end-to-end marketing activation.”
Apollo Program was initially incubated within Anomaly, an agency within the Stagwell network. Like other products in the Stagwell Marketing Cloud – such as PRophet, an AI-based tool for predicting earned media interest and sentiment – it solves for a crucial gap in the marketing services ecosystem and is primarily geared towards in-house marketing teams.
“Apollo was created in response to clients’ need to bring insights closer to creative and content strategy, to have data lead the creation of brand strategy instead of purely support tactical execution,” said Jason Deland, partner, Anomaly.
The Stagwell Marketing Cloud is a proprietary suite of SaaS and DaaS tools built for the in-house marketer, spanning campaign ideation to activation and analysis. Products within the cloud include PRophet; ARound, which helps live events and retailers scale shared augmented reality experiences; Koalifyed, an end-to-end influencer management platform; the Harris Brand Platform, delivering competitive brand intelligence; and more.
Apollo will continue to be led by its current team including Jim Caruso. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
About Stagwell
Stagwell is the challenger network built to transform marketing. We deliver scaled creative performance for the world’s most ambitious brands, connecting culture-moving creativity with leading-edge technology to harmonize the art and science of marketing. Led by entrepreneurs, our 12,000+ specialists in 34+ countries are unified under a single purpose: to drive effectiveness and improve business results for their clients. Join us at www.stagwellglobal.com.
Contact:
Beth Sidhu
202-423-4414
pr@stagwellglobal.com
SOURCE Stagwell Inc.
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