Marketing News Canada Roundup: AntiSocial Solutions, Vevo Launch, Fluent.ai, and more!

Today we feature a round-up of some big events and recent industry happenings.

• AntiSocial Solutions Adds Jessica Luch and Lindsay Bryson to Leadership Team
• Vevo Launches App on Google TV and Other Android TV OS Devices
• Fluent.ai Taps Jessica Giaccari as Vice President of Finance
• McGillivray Group Expands Its Focus to Talent Development & Marketing

Read more below!

AntiSocial Solutions Adds Jessica Luch and Lindsay Bryson to Leadership Team

Social media agency AntiSocial Solutions, sister company to global creative collective Thinkingbox, has announced that it has appointed Jessica Luch as Creative Director and Lindsay Bryson as Director of Client Services.

AntiSocial Solutions sets itself apart from competitors by focusing heavily on storytelling and data-driven strategy, driving its clients' social and business impact. These latest acquisitions to the leadership team further the company’s robust capabilities in creative content production and client services, allowing the company to deliver a full service offering to their clients across social.

“Jessica and Lindsay bring integral and complementary skills to the leadership team that will help scale and amplifies the impact of social for our clients. Creative storytelling and innovative thinking, underpinned by sustained relationships will drive strong business value for brands,” said Sarah Scott, Managing Director, Thinkingbox Vancouver.

Previously with Thinkingbox as Associate Creative Director and formerly with Pound & Grain, Luch has worked with various brands, including Arc’Teryx, SAP, TELUS, Lululemon, and GameSense. As Creative Director, Luch will be heading the creative and content teams in her new role. Utilizing her expansive innovation background, Luch will elevate AntiSocial Solutions’ creative work and lead their creative offerings into an exciting new chapter.

“The focus in 2022 for me is to continue to help grow our creative team. I'm constantly floored by the raw talent on our team. Through and through, I believe social media is the single most impactful communication tool we have at our disposal. By tapping into new ways our brands can move fluidly across its ever-evolving nature, we can exponentially elevate our client's work. And I can't wait for where the team can take things in 2022,” said Luch.

Before joining AntiSocial Solutions, Bryson was a Group Account Director at The & Partnership working on the TELUS business. Bryson brings extensive experience across multiple industries, including CPG, retail, non-profit, insurance, telecommunications, and tech. As Director of Client Services, Bryson will ensure the strongest support and partnerships for AntiSocial’s clients, both existing and new. In her role, she will focus on building solid and lasting partnerships to help both companies and their clients achieve success and business impact through scroll-stopping content across the social sphere.

“I'd love to challenge the idea that social is just a small part of the marketing activities of a business. Social is an incredibly powerful tool, and with the right expertise and creativity, it can help you achieve strong results. We will be pushing to continue to drive impact for our clients and to strive to be the most recognized social agency in Canada.” said Bryson.

In a year of exponential growth for the agency, the company has increased its staff by over 100% across all departments. This continues its efforts to deliver impactful full-service social communications for its clients through 2022 and beyond

Vevo Launches App on Google TV and Other Android TV OS Devices

Vevo, the world’s leading music video network, today announced it is bringing the Vevo app to Google TV™ and other Android TV™ OS devices.

Vevo’s TV app will be available on Android TV OS devices across the U.S., Canada, Australia, New Zealand, U.K., France, Italy, Spain, Germany, Mexico, and Brazil, significantly boosting Vevo’s global TV footprint.

Given the popularity of Android TV OS in the smart TV market, this partnership greatly expands free, on-demand access to Vevo’s vast, sought-after catalog of premium music videos, including official releases, live performances, and original Vevo-produced content.

“Vevo’s mission is to maximize the commercial and promotional value of the music video, an art form that marries sight, sound, and motion and is a key pillar of entertainment. So, as consumer viewership trends of music videos continue to shift towards internet-enabled, connected TVs (CTV) in today’s world, we continue to expand our distribution to meet consumers in those environments they are actively frequenting,” said Kevin McGurn, president, sales & distribution, Vevo. “Google is a critical international distribution channel for Vevo, bringing a huge global audience to our content, as we lead the charge in returning music video programming to TV screens at scale.”

“Music videos are not only insanely popular, but they are powerful and highly-engaging content to advertise against due to the deep emotional connections that they forge with the viewer. They can feel deeply personal yet have mass appeal. Vevo’s app uniquely provides advertisers with the opportunity to appear alongside some of the most cherished and iconic music videos. With support for Android TV OS, brands can access even more inventory and more eyeballs, especially hard-to-reach consumers, such as cord-cutters, cord-nevers, and younger demographics, which do not watch traditional broadcast television,” explained McGurn.

Vevo recently updated its TV app to combine linear programming with search and discovery functions, with the interface reflecting a live TV experience. Videos auto-play upon entering the app, and the more viewers visit, the more personalized the auto-play content recommendations become over time. Vevo’s enhanced app is available on Google TV™ and other Android TV™ OS devices.

Fluent.ai Taps Jessica Giaccari as Vice President of Finance

Fluent.ai, a Canadian company specializing in embedded speech recognition solutions, announced today the expansion of its executive leadership team with the appointment of Jessica Giaccari to Vice President of Finance.

In her new role, Giaccari is responsible for leading Fluent.ai’s day-to-day financial strategy, transforming the finance function for scaling and assisting in various areas related to human resource management and legal. She will also work closely alongside the management team across departments and provide strategic short-term and long-term council as Fluent.ai prepares to go to market for its Growth funding round. Jessica brings extensive knowledge of financial analysis and business plan development for partnerships, investments, and acquisitions to the position.

“Fluent.ai continues to scale to meet the demand the industry is seeing for speech solutions that solve the problems of today’s voice assistive technology,” Giaccari said. “The far-field speech and voice recognition market is projected to reach $3.89 billion by 2026 with the growth being driven by the rise of voice-controlled smart home devices. Through strategic growth initiatives, Fluent is poised to become a market leader in the space, and I’m part of an incredible team that’s expanding to accomplish that.”

Prior to joining Fluent.ai, Giaccari spent five years at Busbud where she had the opportunity to grow from controller to Vice President of Finance, and she previously served as a senior auditor at Deloitte. Jessica earned her graduate diploma from Montreal’s McGill University. Using her past experience, Giaccari will build a robust financial model that matches Fluent.ai’s scaling efforts as it becomes a leading provider of small footprint, embedded voice recognition technology.

Fluent.ai offers intuitive, offline voice recognition software solutions for original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). Its patented speech-to-intent Edge AI technology is noise-robust, language and accent agnostic and is small enough to be embedded into even the tiniest of devices. Most recently, Fluent.ai announced a partnership with Knowles Corporation at the 2022 International Consumer Electronics Show (CES), demoing hands-free voice-controlled earbuds that revolutionize the hearables user experience through flexible and noise-robust voice commands without the need for an accompanying smartphone app.

“Our company is transforming the way people experience voice-enabled listening and interact with voice user interfaces on the edge, and we needed to scale our financial efforts to match Fluent.ai’s growth,” Probal Lala, CEO of Fluent.ai said. “Jess not only brings strategic financial leadership experience to the executive team but has embraced our organizational philosophy and will play an integral role as we prepare for a Growth funding round.”

To date Fluent.ai has received $7.7 million in funding. If you are interested in inquiring about funding opportunities for the upcoming Growth round, please email probal.lala@fluent.ai. For more information, visit https://fluent.ai/.

McGillivray Group Expands Its Focus to Talent Development & Marketing

McGillivray Group President, Andrew McGillivray, is pleased to announce that the company is expanding its talent development and media production services business. McGillivray Group will now offer turnkey talent development and marketing services, as well as robust new offerings in the digital and linear media production space.

These new services support the company’s growing presence in the media landscape, beyond its initial focus, TV personality and Real Estate Investor Scott McGillivray, in producing customized programs, podcasts, digital content and tv commercials. This complements McGillivray Group’s slate of linear television shows through its subsidiary, McGillivray Entertainment Media Inc. (MEM), whose original and format content includes Canada’s Got Talent (Citytv) starring judges Howie Mandel, Lilly Singh, Kardinal Offishall, Trish Stratus and host Lindsay Ell; Scott’s Vacation House Rules (HGTV Canada, HGTV) hosted by Scott McGillivray and Debra Salmoni; Renovation Resort hosted by Scott McGillivray and Bryan Baeumler (HGTV Canada, HGTV) along with additional new content and programming initiatives that will be announced throughout 2022.

McGillivray Group currently produces independent content directly with select brands and talent and are excited to announce that they will now be representing WWE superstar Trish Stratus, who was recently named the WWE’s Greatest Female Superstar of all time and is set to capture the hearts of North America from her seat at the Canada’s Got Talent judge’s table this spring. McGillivray Group now also represents interior designer Debra Salmoni who has continued to impress and entertain audiences with her design skills and sense of humour on Scott's Vacation House Rules.

"Building relationships with brands and producing innovative content has always been a core part of our business,” said Andrew McGillivray. “While our original focus was building the Scott McGillivray brand and creating supporting content, it became clear that there was an opportunity to apply the same principles to other talent brands. Through our many years of creating successful partnerships, one of our key differentiators is our focus on providing turnkey, end-to-end solutions for both talent and corporate brands that create strong, long-term, and impactful relationships, instead of taking a transactional approach.

“Being a full service production company – from concept creation through post production – has been a mainstay in our business from day one, whether it was linear television or branded content for our partners. With this expansion, we’re able to offer more opportunities for our partners, but also to select clients who aren’t engaged in a full scale partnership with us.”

McGillivray Group’s work has spanned countless successful partnerships, including collaborations with many leading brands including CIBC, Corus, Rogers, 3M, Post-it®, Hello Fresh, Home Hardware, McDonald’s, Aflac, Ikea, Hyundai, Goodlife, Dairy Farmers of Canada, and many more.

Compiled from various sources by Emma Whiten, Editor of Marketing News Canada