Interviews, insight & analysis on digital media & marketing

NDA News Roundup: Wavemaker UK, Dell Technologies, Freepik and many more

The Royal Navy announces the launch of a sophisticated web-based Conversational AI assistant; in partnership with Wavemaker UK; their partners Voxly Digital and the Navy’s digital programme partner: Great State. Accessible via the Royal Navy website, the Royal Navy Virtual Guide has been created to ensure its information and processes resonate with the changing needs of a new generation of potential recruits. Using sophisticated data and technology, this innovative extension of the Royal Navy Recruitment team will change the way candidates are communicated with, enhancing how they access career information and advice. The Royal Navy Virtual Guide will provide applicants with individually tailored journeys, content and nudges as they navigate their way through the extensive information currently held on the RN careers website. With over 100 roles available in the Royal Navy, it will assist them to explore the career path that is best suited to their needs, ambitions and experience. It can even help candidates to complete their application form within the chat interface to kick-start their joining journey.

Dell Technologies has appointed Steve Young as Senior Vice President (SVP) and General Manager (GM) for Dell Technologies in the UK, effective 30th January 2023. In his capacity as Company Director of Dell Corporation Limited, Young is responsible for Dell’s UK business, client satisfaction and employee engagement. He will continue positioning Dell as the partner of choice for customers and partners looking to digitally transform and revolutionise their businesses. Young’s accomplished career includes managing the EMEA Dell Technologies Select business, driving the Dell full portfolio of solutions with the largest customer accounts throughout the EMEA region. Most recently, Young led Dell Technologies’ global cloud partnerships with hyperscalers, solidifying Dell’s position in the multicloud market.

Freepik, a European platform for high-quality and audiovisual assets, announces the launch of video assets built in-house, expanding its fingerprint in the media resources market. Now, people can access high-quality videos – which encompass a wide variety of general content, targeted at professional users – directly from Freepik, rather than being redirected elsewhere. The news follows a recent study revealing that 91% of consumers want to see more online video content from brands, while 86% of marketing professionals use video as a marketing tool – so increasing access to video resources is much needed. In the US alone, more than 75% of adults spend up to two hours per day watching short-form digital video content – a substantial market that will only increase.

Quantum Metric, the Continuous Product Design platform for customer-driven digital experiences, has announced a series of new customer wins in the EMEA region, including Virgin Atlantic, Air Europa, and Domestic & General. New customers in the region have contributed to EMEA seeing an 85% ARR increase between 2021 and 2022. Quantum Metric’s recent wins in EMEA demonstrate the company’s growing presence and influence in the region with expected continued developments in DACH and IBERIA regions, as well as continued saturation with the UK & I.

Sook, the proptech innovator reimagining how retail space is used, has appointed Octopus Group as its strategic comms agency. Octopus will help Sook shape its market positioning and generate awareness of its innovative model for using vacant prime retail space, in order to fuel its growth both in the UK and internationally. Octopus Group will work with Sook to craft a compelling external narrative and develop high impact campaigns to reach retail marketers as well as advertising and PR agency experiential buyers. Octopus will also help Sook supercharge customer PR, executive profiling across earned and social media and engage with influencer communities around key client activations.

Unistellar is taking a new step toward realizing its vision of becoming the world leader in consumer astronomy. By welcoming an investment from Nikon, the company is enhancing the synergy between Unistellar’s imaging and space observation know-how and Nikon’s optical and industrial expertise. Nikon and Unistellar are building on the success of their R&D collaboration, which was announced in July 2021. The eVscope 2, Unistellar’s first smart telescope that incorporates Nikon’s technological contribution, has already achieved international success, receiving an innovation award at CES 2022. The reaffirmed partnership between the two companies will allow Unistellar to develop new smart telescopes and bring them to market more quickly, bolstering its international growth.  

Global intelligence and cyber security consultancy S-RM has announced the opening of its new office location in Manchester. This will be S-RM’s second UK hub and creates a strategic regional presence in the North for S-RM’s growing portfolio of clients, partners, and employees. The expansion brings the company’s global presence to nine offices globally. The new Manchester office will initially house 12 employees across S-RM’s sales, finance, and central operations functions and, in future, consultants from the Corporate Intelligence and Cyber practices.

Nestlé’s high protein dairy brand, Lindahls, has appointed integrated communications agency Battenhall as its UK PR and social media agency of record. Battenhall won a competitive pitch that will see the agency develop an integrated communications strategy, across owned and earned channels. The Swedish high protein dairy brand has already been a big hit since it reached UK supermarket shelves in 2018, but is now looking to boost brand awareness in the healthy lifestyle food sector. The brief will see Battenhall working closely with Lindahls on building brand awareness and increasing penetration through creative campaigns, always-on social media content, influencer strategy, and consumer and trade media relations.

Precis Digital has announced the appointment of Anna Bäck as the new Chairman of its board. Bäck, former CEO of Kivra and current Board Member at e.g. Nordnet Bank AB, will lead the appointment of the first board of Precis Digital after welcoming Nalka Invest as a minority investor last year. Anna Bäck joins the Precis board with extensive leadership experience and knowledge in scaling tech companies globally from previous operative roles such as CEO for Kivra and Associate Partner at McKinsey & Company, along with past and present board positions in Nordnet Bank, Permobil and Kivra.

Global Screening Services (GSS), a RegTech innovator focused on financial transactions screening, has announced its partnership with Dow Jones Risk & Compliance, a global provider of best-in-class risk data, integrated technology solutions and due diligence services for managing regulatory risk. This partnership will enable financial institutions to access an industry-leading set of information on sanctioned entities to identify transactions of concern in real-time. Providing granular coverage of global sanctions regimes, including comprehensive control and ownership information, Dow Jones’s payment and transaction screening dataset delivers trusted information to help organisations manage risk. Dow Jones’s multilingual research team expertly interprets data across jurisdictions and languages, delivering only the most relevant results to minimise false positives and reduce the compliance workload. This will enable GSS to screen financial transactions with precision and confidence.

Ordnance Survey has announced Nuevo – the purpose-driven creative agency as their Brand Strategy and Creative Partner. Nuevo is supporting Ordnance Survey as it launches a new ‘See A Better Place’ video-on-demand advertising campaign that unifies the brand and helps deepen public understanding to change the perception of Ordnance Survey from just being ‘known’ to fully ‘understood’. Following the development of Ordnance Survey’s new location data expertise for sustainability applications, Nuevo is supporting the brand in reconnecting with prospective users, through revitalised, more inspiring messaging, using multiple channels to drive perception change and awareness. With the ultimate goal of driving a greater understanding of the Ordnance Survey oering and ultimately, increasing engagement with the brand. 

Accenture and Conga, a specialist in revenue lifecycle management solutions, have formed a strategic partnership to help clients transform their revenue lifecycle management processes – from price quotes and contracts, to fulfilment and renewal services. Together, the companies are helping organisations around the world streamline and automate their revenue processes to drive efficiencies and support business growth. The collaboration brings together Accenture’s delivery, advisory and industry experience and Conga’s revenue lifecycle management solutions to help global companies drive more predictable revenue. Focused on healthcare, life sciences, financial services, high-tech and industrial industries, Accenture and Conga have collaborated on engagements for dozens of clients.

Commvault, an enterprise data protection company for the complex and mission critical hybrid environments of today’s global businesses, announced with Microsoft the results of an independent study from Enterprise Strategy Group (ESG) showing real world cost savings driven by Commvault and Microsoft’s joint solutions for securing and protecting over one million terabytes – or One Exabyte – of customer data. Through their long-standing collaboration, the companies deliver breadth of coverage, flexibility, cost efficiency, and reduced risk to customers. The ESG study, titled “Analysing the Economic Benefits of Data Protection with Commvault on Microsoft Azure,” found that customers reported 30% cost savings, 38% reduction in data footprint, and thousands of hours of staff time recovered along with improved data security. 

London-based UK Managing Director of emagine Consulting Martin Hartley has been appointed Group Chief Commercial Officer of the elite management and technology consulting firm. Hartley will be responsible for unifying commercial services at the rapidly expanding group, which is headquartered in Copenhagen and operates from 24 locations across ten European countries, including the UK and Ireland, and in India. He will oversee professional services, marketing, bid management, bestshoring, the firm’s practice of bringing together bespoke global teams for each project, and group revenue. 

GreyOrange, Inc., a specialist in automated robotic fulfillment and inventory optimization software, today announced co-founder Akash Gupta as Chief Executive Officer. Gupta leads GreyOrange’s seasoned senior executive team to advance the company’s mission to be the world’s leading automation solutions platform. Prior to his appointment as CEO, Gupta held executive roles at GreyOrange, including Chief Technology Officer and Chief Product Officer. He also played a key role in developing gStore, GreyOrange’s innovative omnichannel retail management solution. Together with Kohli, Gupta was instrumental in bringing to market GreyMatter™, a fulfilment orchestration platform that assigns work to job-specific robots—from any vendor—based on near-real-time information, fulfilling the founders’ long-term vision of an end-to-end orchestration and intelligence platform.

Neustar Security Services is now operating as Vercara, a new brand with the same laser focus on securing the online experience for many of the world’s largest enterprises. The new identity, part of the company’s evolution to a standalone entity, centres around Vercara’s purpose-built, global cloud security platform that provides layers of protection to safeguard businesses’ online presence from attacks no matter where they originate or where they are aimed. Vercara has doubled down on its commitment to providing industry-leading cloud security solutions that are flexible, easily adaptable, highly scalable, and vendor-agnostic, minimising effort for customers and enabling them to focus on growing their businesses. Vercara’s signature consultative, collaborative approach is baked into the organisation’s core values and is critical to ensuring that its solutions are always responsive, optimal, and tailored to customers’ operational practices. The company’s depth of human knowledge remains critical to maximizing the impact of its industry-leading Ultra product line. Customers will continue to have access to 24/7 support from experienced and highly specialised experts.

Khoros, a specialist in digital-first customer engagement software and services, has announced its integration with leading review platform, Trustpilot. This partnership enables brands to improve customer experiences and increase their customer satisfaction by reducing the time taken to respond to queries in the Khoros platform. Through this integration, Khoros users can monitor, review, and respond to the customer feedback they receive on Trustpilot as soon as it’s published through a single interface within Khoros Care. For social teams managing brand reputation and social care, and for contact centers handling high volumes of engagement on every channel, this new integration strengthens Khoros Care’s capabilities as a unified engagement tool. With Trustpilot representing over 893,000+ domains and with 167+ million reviews to date, it is one of the largest online review communities. Businesses can also use Khoros’s analytics to unpack and understand the customer sentiment behind Trustpilot service reviews. They can also compare reviews with other customer service channels and use these valuable insights to convert their customers into their biggest brand advocates.

Mobile marketing consultancy ConsultMyApp has appointed Gordon Bowman as its new Sales Director. Bowman will lead the agency’s business development strategy, expanding ConsultMyApp’s existing client roster which includes O2 Priority, General Motors, Channel 4, and Holland & Barrett. He will also work closely with the rest of the senior management team to expand the business into new markets and take advantage of new opportunities in the fast-evolving mobile app space. Bowman has over ten years’ experience in mobile app sales, most recently as the Sales Manager and International Client Partner at Liftoff where he was involved in spearheading expansion in EMEA and building out various commercial operations for its global teams; assisting with customer success, sales operations and recruitment processes. Prior to that, he spent two years at Twitter in its app and mobile sales team in San Francisco.

SmartSearch, a digital compliance provider, has launched a next-generation platform with enhanced functionalities driven by the latest technology and customer feedback. Based on the latest, futureproof technology, the platform includes a seamless new interface as well as a host of features and a level of configurability never before available. SmartSearch’s enhanced service, with a 97% match and pass rate and Triple Bureau reliability, offers bespoke configurability and automation, improved compliance standards, audit-ready reporting, row-level encryption, and strengthened perpetual KYC. It sets a new standard in cost-effective seamless compliance, saving clients time and transforming customer experience across various industries including finance, legal, accountancy, property, gaming, banking, insurance, investment, property development, and cryptocurrency. Stress-tested for reliability, the enhanced platform has already carried out more than six million searches for clients worldwide during beta testing.

NewTek, a specialist in IP-based video technology and part of the Vizrt Group, has announced a new technical partnership with the leading video management system provider, Panopto, to launch the new NewTek CaptureCast. CaptureCast is an automated, IP-based, distributed lecture capture solution that connects any room, whether a classroom or a meeting room, to any other space – anywhere in the world via the power of NDI®. As a Panopto-endorsed capture hardware device, CaptureCast has been jointly engineered and extensively tested to ensure the best integration and performance. CaptureCast, when combined with a powerful and flexible scheduling tool, automates the lecture or presentation capture, freeing the storyteller, presenter, or educator to focus on the content.