People agency launches
Brand Momentum veteran Stephanie Fournier has launched a new agency, People (PPL).
PPL, a female-owned and operated shop, is meant to be disruptive to the industry and a “beacon of empowerment,” the agency says. It’s the creation of Stephanie Fournier, a 10-year veteran of Brand Momentum, who most recently worked as the shop’s senior vice president of strategy. Her marketing tenure has included work brand accounts including GE, Guru Energy Drink, Wonder Bread, Walmart, and Porsche Canada.
“I wanted to create something that was purpose-built around serving people with an experience we would want for each other – fair wages, benefits and upside for work done well,” Fournier explains.
She tells strategy that there are are so many stats on burnout, workers feeling undervalued, lack of training, or gender bias, citing many employees feeling they lack opportunities, technology, and autonomy.
According to Fournier, PPL is “largely FMCG focused but covering brands across all product categories.”
The shop also partnered with agency support service provider, Guild.
Klick finds way to detect if voice real or AI-powered
Toronto’s Klick Labs, the research arm of health agency Klick, is working on analyzing voices to find out if they are the real thing
Klick Labs identified 12,000 biomarkers – features inherent to human voices and physiology – to distinguish a real voice from one that’s AI-generated, analyzing variables like heart rate, length of speech and pauses.
As Canada’s Competition Bureau warned in March, AI can impersonate brands or well-known people to promote fake products or services, generate convincing false investment opportunities, use chat bots to convincingly mimic people in product reviews and use voice cloning for deceptive telemarketing.
This month, Klick along with research staff from Humber College, said they would deploy a machine learning-based acoustic analysis model to ID a vocal biomarker in individuals with prediabetes within the Greater Toronto Area’s South Asian population.
Earlier this year, Klick named Simon Smith its EVP of generative AI.
SitePartners plans a move
BC and Alberta-based creative agency SitePartners is moving to a new headquarters, a 10,000 square foot facility in Greater Vancouver that boasts a state-of-the-art industrial production studio.
President Andrew Hansen announced that there will also be collaborative spaces for team members, a lounge area, and also a training and conference space to host more than 100 professionals to gather and learn.
The agency, which specializes in industrial, government and public sector work, is responsible for a recent campaign in support of BC’s wildfire authorities.
