Today I am delighted to announce that Brandwatch is joining forces with Cision. 

This is a category-defining $450m acquisition that brings PR, social media management, and digital consumer intelligence together with two leaders in their respective industries. 

The entrepreneur’s journey

Brandwatch launched thirteen and a half years ago. The company has been through a lot of changes and chapters during that time. As have I. Just over two years ago, we merged with Crimson Hexagon to create the clear leader in our market. That job is done. You can read more about the entrepreneurial story of how Brandwatch evolved here. And now, it feels like from the company’s perspective, and from mine too, the journey needs a new chapter. Given our history and the spirit of the company, that chapter needs to be ambitious.

The market need

Brandwatch is known as a social listening company. We prefer to think of ourselves as a digital consumer intelligence company. Whichever label one uses, we operate in the exploding space of digital data. We exist to help our customers make sense of the vast amount of information that is created and shared. I think of it as a new kind of intelligence. So much data that it takes banks of computers to process and store it and the awesome potential of AI to give it structure and meaning. This intelligence then needs to map to customer and user needs so they can make better decisions and create more successful businesses. This is a big task. It’s one that needs huge resources. Brandwatch has some scale – we’re a 500 person, $100+m business – but we need more. 

Why Cision?

Cision has two things that are extremely attractive to us. 

Firstly they have much greater scale. With 75,000 customers and a combined innovation engine, Cision and Brandwatch together can supercharge what we’ve been working on and the value we offer to our clients. Brandwatch also fills a need in the Cision offering, so the fit is two-way and highly complementary. 

Secondly, they have visionary owners (Platinum Equity) and an impressive new leadership team led by CEO Abel Clark. There’s lots of work to do, but this is a group of people that inspire belief.

Ambition

This is at the core of why we are joining Cision. We want to be part of something that is important on a global scale. It’s that simple. In particular we want to continue to innovate, listen to our customers, and create valuable products that help them succeed

I’m so proud of what we have built and I'm equally excited about what is to come. It’s a big day – one to remember.

To find out more, read the press release and my longer blog post about the journey of building Brandwatch from the very beginning.