Looking to tap into the “future of conversational commerce,” ForwardPMX said this week that it acquired Headliner Labs, which offers retailers and brands a voice and chat platform aimed at increasing user engagement.
Caroline Klatt, chief executive officer and cofounder of Headliner Labs, and Dana Gibber, chief operating officer and cofounder of the company, will stay on board and lead the launch of ForwardPMX’s “voice and conversational commerce capabilities.” The cofounders have been contributors to WWD’s Think Tank guest column feature — writing about a variety of topics from chatbot technology to social media marketing.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
ForwardPMX said Klatt and Gibber will join the company as co-chief innovation officers “spearheading the agency’s voice and chat practice and helping to position clients for growth in a voice-enabled future. Headliner Labs’ solutions and proprietary technology platform will be fully integrated with ForwardPMX’s global offering, operating out of the New York City headquarters.”
ForwardPMX’s global ceo, James Townsend, said Klatt and Gibber’s “strategic guidance is key to developing clients’ understanding of the role that technologies like voice and chat play in their businesses. In our increasingly automated world, brands need the right technologies in place, but they also need strong human direction and expertise to capitalize on change and scale their programs successfully.”
The company said in a statement that Headliner Labs’ voice and personalized messaging capabilities “help brands to solve critical business challenges, with solutions created for customer acquisition, support, insight gathering, brand building and other key marketing objectives.”
“The team also provides strategic consulting and road-mapping on chatbot, conversational commerce and voice initiatives as businesses increasingly look to agencies for expertise in these emerging channels,” ForwardPMX added.
Klatt said chat and voice platforms “are intuitive to how today’s digitally-native customers interact, and they represent a significant opportunity to not only nurture customer relationships, but also drive revenue” while Gibber noted that brands need to be “able to gain richer consumer insight, and in turn, deliver more relevant experiences in dynamic, interactive, engaging environments — that is the expectation from consumers today.”