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Media Contact

Kara Gelber
pr@stagwellglobal.com

Investor Relations Contact

Ben Allanson
ir@stagwellglobal.com

Founded by Eran Nizri and Yehonatan Arami in 2017, LEADERS and IMAI combine high-value digital and influencer marketing strategy with a cutting-edge, AI-powered SaaS influencer marketing platform. IMAI leverages advanced AI technologies to connect brands with over 300 million creators worldwide. The platform allows users from anywhere in the world to launch campaigns in just a few clicks, offering robust analytics, sales prediction models, and campaign management tools. Clients include Nespresso, Samsung, and Colgate-Palmolive; notable SaaS clients include Coca-Cola, Playtika, Estée Lauder, and Superdry. IMAI will supplement the bench of influencer marketing platforms currently in use by Stagwell’s agencies around the world, including existing tools in the PRophet Comms Tech Suite.

“We are excited to welcome LEADERS to the Stagwell family. This acquisition strengthens our Stagwell Marketing Cloud offering with cutting-edge AI solutions for influencer marketing while marking our first agency in Israel amid a substantial global expansion push from Stagwell this year,” said Mark Penn, Chairman and CEO, Stagwell. “Eran and his team share our vision of transforming marketing with technology, and we look forward to working together to deliver value to our clients across the globe.”

“Combining with Eran and the LEADERS team is a force multiplier for PRophet and Stagwell to expand global reach, integrate advanced AI technologies and leverage domain expertise around high performance digital and influencer marketing strategy for customers,” said Aaron Kwittken, Founder and CEO of SMC’s Comms Tech Suite.

“This acquisition marks a transformative milestone for LEADERS and InfluencerMarketing.AI,” added Nizri. “With Stagwell’s extensive network and resources, we are set to redefine the landscape of influencer marketing. Our goal is to become the world’s leading influencer and digital marketing powerhouse, delivering unparalleled value and innovation to our clients. We look forward to integrating our capabilities into Stagwell’s Comms Tech Unit and leading the industry into a new era of excellence.”

LEADERS’ and IMAI’s success is driven by a strong leadership team. Eran Nizri will continue to serve as Group CEO, reporting into Aaron Kwittken, Founder and CEO of Stagwell Marketing Cloud’s PRophet Comms Tech Suite. Itamar Gonsherovitz will continue to spearhead LEADERS’ digital agency operations as CEO. Yehonatan Arami, will continue to lead business development, expanding the company’s reach within the Stagwell network.

The acquisition comes as Stagwell expands its global footprint and invests further in AI-enabled solutions at the forefront of digital marketing. LEADERS is Stagwell’s seventh acquisition of 2024, following Team Epiphany (U.S.), Sidekick (U.K.), What’s Next Partners (France), PROS (Brazil), Business Traveller (Global), and BERA (U.S.).

About Stagwell Marketing Cloud

Stagwell Marketing Cloud (SMC) is a suite of data-driven SaaS solutions built for the modern marketer. Born out of Stagwell’s (NASDAQ: STGW) network of award-winning marketing agencies, SMC empowers marketers to drive business and brand impact by giving them intuitive tools equipped with proprietary, actionable data. SMC’s portfolio of solutions powers market research, communications, and media for brands worldwide by leveraging technology such as generative and predictive artificial intelligence, machine learning, augmented reality, and more. Get your head in the cloud at www.stagwellmarketingcloud.com.

About PRophet

Founded in 2020 by PR industry leader Aaron Kwittken, PRophet is an award-winning suite of essential, AI-powered Comms Tech tools purpose-built to empower modern communicators to perform more efficiently by quickly uncovering and authentically engaging with high-authority journalists and leading influencers. PRophet was awarded PRovoke Media’s Innovation SABRE in 2023 and 2024, a 2024 Webby Award, and was included in PR News’ 2024 Tech Hotlist. The all-in-one platform offers three core solutions:  PRophet Earn creates and tests “mediable” PR content to predict earned media interest and sentiment.  PRophet Influence combines vertical AI, analytics, discovery and tracking technologies to inform and manage influencer marketing campaigns. PRophet Monitor delivers real-time, earned and social media monitoring, reporting and analytics to alert teams of emerging trends, threats, brand mentions, and opportunities for real-time response. PRophet is part of the Stagwell Marketing Cloud (SMC), a suite of data-driven SaaS solutions built for the modern marketer. Visit prprophet.ai to learn more.

About LEADERS
Established in 2017, LEADERS is a digital agency specializing in influencer marketing. With a focus on performance and sales, LEADERS provides comprehensive services that harness the power of influencer marketing and social media.

About InfluencerMarketing.AI
Established in 2020, InfluencerMarketing.AI is a SaaS influencer marketing platform that connects brands with a vast network of influencers. Utilizing advanced AI and machine learning technologies, InfluencerMarketing.AI offers robust analytics, sales prediction models, and management tools to optimize influencer marketing campaigns, focusing on e-commerce brands to track conversions and ROI.

Contacts:
Kara Gelber
Stagwell 
pr@stagwellglobal.com

Stephanie Hernandez

PRophet Comms Tech
v-stephanie.hernandez@prprophet.ai

ABOUT THE AGENCIES BEHIND THE WORK

Goodstuff is the UK’s leading media planning and buying agency. Our combination of entrepreneurial ownership, a comms planning heritage and an unrestrained, transparent trading approach gives us the ability to deliver inventive media solutions that no one else can.

Assembly Global is a modern agency delivering a market-leading global omnichannel media offering, powered by data, technology and business consulting solutions to find the change that fuels growth for the best brands in the world.

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With the constant rise in the cost of living, people are pinching pennies and struggling to find ways to sustainably meet their personal demands. But what if you didn’t have to decide between saving money and helping the environment?

Goodstuff and Assembly Global partnered with OVO Energy, the UK’s second largest energy supplier, to encourage users to shift their energy use out of peak energy times. Powered by a proprietary green bidding technology built by Assembly and Goodstuff, the “Greener Grid,” serves ads in greener moments, letting passerby’s know when to cut carbon emissions and contribute to a better energy system.

Our Approach to Transformation

To better understand when to “plug in,” Greener Grid, a dynamic out-of-home campaign, displays the perfect opportunities to engage in sustainable moments and reduce carbon impact. Powered by generative AI and real-time API data from the National Grid, the campaign rewards customers for shifting energy usage out of peak energy times (4-7pm, weekdays), to times when the grid is greener, cleaner and powered by renewable energy. Sustainable messaging — “If you’re seeing this, it’s a greener time to use energy” — only appears when the grid is running on renewable energy, letting users know now’s the time to make a greener decision.

Through Assembly and Goodstuff’s AI-powered STAGE technology, we created a custom algorithm to fuel programmatic buying and automatically bid when the grid is greener, updated every 30 minutes, with more spend made available when the grid is at its greenest. Millions of energy choices are made every single day, and OVO Energy Forecast empowers customers to make those choices, leveraging data and technology to help them use less energy.

Our Impact

The industry-first digital billboards empower “greener moments” on a seemingly ordinary platform in a uniquely creative way. OVO’s ads were featured on more than 2,600 screens across the UK, from digital six-sheets to large formats across roadside, rail, and shopping centers, as part of the brands broader Power Move campaign.

• Nearly 17,000 people signed up to OVO’s Power Move during the two-month campaign period, bringing a 3x increase in traffic to the product page.
• As for the planet, 681,521 kWh of electricity was shifted, which is enough to power 252 houses for an entire year.
• 1 metric tonnes of carbon were avoided.

Wondering where to begin with AI implementation in your organization?

Email Beth Sidhu, Chief Brand and Communications Officer at Stagwell, to discuss how we can support your organization’s digital goals. 

Frontiers in Focus

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ENGAGEMENT WITH CONSUMERS: HARNESSING ‘FOURTH PARTY’ DATA

A eureka moment while developing a game-changing campaign for Tipico is driving a new approach to capturing “fourth-party data” at Code and Theory, Stagwell’s digital transformation network. When tasked by European brand Tipico to break into the Ohio sports betting market, Code and Theory leveraged ChatGPT to create living personas. These synthetic humans not only answered the agency’s questions, they delivered real-time, effective “fourth-party data” that helped Tipico beat every one of their campaign goals. Code and Theory defines “fourth-party data” as a dataset made synthetically by AI from pre-existing first- and third-party data. The new data is essential to anticipating what consumers will want in the future, as opposed to reflecting what they have already wanted.  

“AI’s power and real opportunity is enabling businesses to make better decisions and anticipate customer needs. AI can study your behaviors, actions and patterns and anticipate what you might want, in seconds,” said Dan Gardner, Founder and Executive Chairman, Code and Theory network. “It also allows businesses to reduce the friction and pain points we all experience when we are trying to book a service or buy an item. The steps to getting what you want will simply fall away.”

EFFICIENCY IN MARKETING: HOMEGROWN STORI TOOL ENHANCES SALES RATE

Stori innovates the case study creation process for Instrument’s delivery teams, employing advanced language models and integrations with Google Cloud services to streamline and accelerate the production of tailored case studies. The tool contributed to a record win streak of 50+ new clients for Instrument in 2023. 

“Case studies are the essential proof points for our products and services. Stori enabled us to democratize the case study creation process across the agencies,” said Mike Creighton, Instrument’s Director of AI Research and Development. “Its deployment brought efficiency, quality and consistency to the case study creation process; helped boost enthusiasm for generative AI across the company; and ultimately let teams focus on what truly matters – delivering exceptional results for our clients.” 

ENABLEMENT ACROSS OPERATIONS: REARCHITECTING A TOP PERFORMER WITH AI AT ITS CORE

GALE — our fast-growing business agency — has revolutionized its offering with AI at its core. Called Alchemy.Ai, the private enterprise cloud platform is trained on all aspects of data at the agency and reduces the time spent on critical tasks across all disciplines. The tool can improve the output efficiency of core workflows like audience insight development by as much as 80%. 

“The unveiling of Alchemy.Ai reshapes GALE as we know it, marking a massive shift in how we work and the democratization of data across all teams,” GALE CEO Brad Simms says. “When GALE was founded in 2014, we were first-to-market with our unique blend of creative and consultancy centered around data. While we’ve continued to build our model over the last decade to become one of the most celebrated agencies in North America, Alchemy.Ai is the most significant product update we’ve ever made.”

ABOUT COLLE MCVOY

Colle McVoy (CM) is a full-service creative agency that builds enduring relationships between forward-thinking brands and people. We believe this time of rapid change is filled with opportunities, so we constantly strive to push the boundaries of creativity, pressure-test best practices and create new brand futures. As a Certified B Corporation, we believe a better future means we have a responsibility to use our expertise as a force for good to benefit all people, communities and the planet.

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We’re sure you’ve heard about JOMO (the joy of missing out). Here’s the reality: It’s one thing to miss out, it’s an entirely different thing to find the joy in it. 

To reinforce La-Z-Boy’s new platform, Long Live the Lazy, Colle McVoy’s creative technology team designed and fabricated “The Decliner,” a first-of-its-kind recliner allowing owners to AI-generate a cancellation excuse via SMS simply by pulling the handle. 36,000+ people signed up for a chance to win their own Decliner just in time for National Lazy Day as part of the earned creative brand act. 

Our Approach to Transformation

For a chance to put their feet up with AI assistance and La-Z-Boy style, people were asked to submit the most creative excuses they’ve ever used to protect their JOMO. And, influencers created content to amplify attention to the contest. The innovation was a technological hack—with 225 lines of code directing the AI server and 344 lines for each fabricated chair. An indicator of sorts had to be fashioned to let people know requests were processing, which took the form of an LED-lined puck at the handle base. The tech choices needed to be as reliable as the chairs themselves and couldn’t disrupt La-Z-Boy’s comfort and durability standards.

Our Impact

Colle McVoy drove 1.1B media impressions across 317 placements in the likes of USA Today, Better Homes & Gardens, Architectural Digest and more. People definitely put their feet up, juicing La-Z-Boy’s website traffic by 200% and increasing brand sales by 50% during the first weekend of the campaign.

The La-Z-Boy Decliner has gone on to win several awards, including Best in Technology at the 2023 PRWeek Awards and Best in Research & Consumer Insights in MediaPost’s Planning & Buying Awards. Nearly 13,000 cancellations have been sent by Decliner owners, giddy with AI-assisted JOMO. 

Wondering where to begin with AI implementation in your organization?

Email Beth Sidhu, Chief Brand and Communications Officer at Stagwell, to discuss how we can support your organization’s digital goals. 

CONTACT

Beth Sidhu, Chief Brand and Communications Officer, Stagwell
hello@stagwellglobal.com

Insights for the C-Suite

Enjoyed these insights? View more commentary from our global marketing, technology, and creative experts in Stagwell’s “C[x]O” series for the C-Suite. Click here to explore more.

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The Sky’s the Limit But Use Cases are the Target

At Google Next – and at several marketing and technology conference this year, including CES and SXSW – the clear challenge to attendees was the two-step from theoretical implementations of AI to hard use-cases that provide value to consumers (and reasons for investment). It’s no wonder companies in attendance debuted over 101 real-world use cases for generative AI, spanning applications to consumer experiences, back-end-operations, insights, and more.  

Some common themes emerged as to where AI is providing the most immediate value:  

• AI to accelerate the curation of essential business insights: AI21 Labs showcased how they use a BigQuery integration called Contextual Answers to allow users to query data across their businesses conversationally.  
• AI to put the power of storytelling in everyone’s fingertips. Google unveiled Google Vids, a new AI-powered video creation app in its Workspace suite that can do everything from generate a storyboard, piece together first drafts of videos from stock multimedia, and do voiceovers.  
• AI to bring real-time tracking to the customer experience: UPS is constructing a digital twin of its entire distribution network that will enable customers to see where their packages are at any time.

AI Will Mean a Rewriting of Every Customer Interface – Here’s Where to Begin

Artificial intelligence represents a quantum leap for creativity and productivity.  As a network on the beat of marketing, we know that AI’s rise will mean a rewriting of almost all customer interfaces as companies race to deliver consumers the personalized experiences they’ve desired since the dawn of the internet. At Google Next, Stagwell CTO Merrill Raman and Stagwell Marketing Cloud CTO Mansoor Basha emphasized that the first step brands should take to reap the benefits of AI should be assessing their organization’s data infrastructure to ensure it is primed for AI.  

Tactically, that may mean deep clean-up of existing first party data sources using data science best practices to get the information organized in a manner that AI can extract useful insights from. Or it may mean partnering with a third-party data provider who can supplement your view of existing and prospective consumers. 

AI Can Be the Bedrock for Trust, When Implemented Appropriately

As Left Field Labs CEO Sarah Mehler shared at Google Next: with growth in AI utilization, a critical question to consider is how do we build trust with audiences when considering AI implementation? Striking the right tone in AI-enabled communications is a primary step. And remember that communication that reflects cultural and demographic nuances is what ultimately resonates with audiences and builds trust in new systems. Well-practiced organizations will apply sentiment analysis to better understand the emotions of a user and provide appropriate responses (thus driving traction and building more successful outcomes).  

Attention to detail is also crucial for building trust in AI implementations. A “Chain of Verification” is one of several methods that can be employed to enhance the accuracy of information provided by AI systems. This process involves multiple steps to validate information before it is conveyed to the user. For instance, after our language model generates a response, we can employ a separate validation model to scrutinize the facts within that response. This secondary check helps to identify and correct any inaccuracies or ‘hallucinations’—instances where the model generates false or misleading information. By systematically verifying data through multiple layers, we can provide more reliable and trustworthy outputs. 

Wondering where to begin with AI implementation in your organization?

Email Beth Sidhu, Chief Brand and Communications Officer at Stagwell, to discuss how we can support your organization’s digital goals. 

Originally Released On

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Originally Released On

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CONTACT:

Lindsay Bennett
lindsay.bennett@galepartners.com  

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CONTACT:

Sarah Arvizo
pr@stagwellglobal.com 

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CONTACT:

Sarah Arvizo

pr@stagwellglobal.com 

Originally Released On

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CONTACT:

Maria Brockman
marketing@multiview.com

KWT Global for PRophet
prophet@kwtglobal.com