Blurrt, the company specialising in finding and analysing comments and sentiments on social media – and who broadcast the first ever live Twitter reaction to a political debate in the UK – has announced a major new appointment following news of significant growth plans and a crowdfunding investment drive.
Former FremantleMedia Executive Simon Spalding will formally join the Welsh start-up as Executive Chairman, helping to shape strategic direction and oversee the company’s ambitious growth plans in both UK and international markets, building on his previous role as board advisor.
With an impressive international career in television and marketing, Spalding’s previous roles include Fremantle’s regional CEO for Europe and Asia Pacific and CEO of Yummi Media Group. He will lead investor relations and oversee sales and marketing processes as the brand continues to expand and deliver valuable new content opportunities for its clients.
Named as one of Wales’ best start-ups by Growth Business just last month, Blurrt works with companies to deepen engagement with social audiences through pioneering software that allows them to listen, analyse, showcase and engage with social audiences in real time.
As a first-of-its-kind in the analytics industry, it has already worked with clients like Warner Brothers, GoCompare, ITV, LBC and BBC to establish audience identified issues and sentiment and help them to instantly understand and showcase how people react and engage with their programmes, events and brands.
Since launching in 2013, Blurrt has broadcast the first ever live Twitter reaction to a political debate in the UK – an EU debate between Clegg and Farage – and has worked on a number of major events including this year’s General Election and the Rugby World Cup.
Now, it hopes to secure £500k through a crowdfunding campaign on Seedrs which launched earlier this month.
Spalding was impressed by the company’s ground-breaking platform, its simplicity and its potential to unearth new content opportunities for businesses in the broadcast, sports and entertainment space.
He said: “I was drawn to Blurrt because I instantly loved what their product could do. The platform has a unique ability to discover and surface social content in a way that no-one else in the market can currently offer – and that in itself is hugely exciting.
“In all my previous roles I have focused on creating and capturing value from unique content. Blurrt’s platform delivers a unique ability for users to seek out, aggregate, interpret and then utilise this rich content stream either to further engage their audience or to better understand how to address their customers’ needs. The platform has uses across a broad range of industry sectors and is easily scalable on an international basis. I look forward to helping drive this company forward and showing the market the value its services can add”
Jason Smith, CEO, commented: “We are delighted to announce the addition of Simon Spalding to our board. It’s a hugely exciting time for Blurrt, and his experience will be invaluable as we continue to grow and strengthen the business.
“We know businesses today face a huge challenge in using and making sense of their social data. For us it’s really important that we remain at the coalface of discovery and analytics and invest in our product, so that we can continue to offer our clients the most cutting-edge capability on the market.”
Blurrt’s crowdfunding campaign aims to secure £500k. For more information on the crowdfunding campaign, visit https://www.seedrs.com/blurrt.