Cision is to acquire Brandwatch, a leader in digital consumer intelligence and social media listening, for USD450 million.
This strategic move will combine two leaders in their respective industries and will bring to customers the substantial benefits of their complementary capabilities to deliver the future of PR, marketing and digital customer engagement.
The forces of digital transformation reward those organisations and boardrooms that listen to and quickly capitalise on digital insights from their consumers. Leading companies are quickly adapting and using these insights to create tailored, authentic communications and direct connections with customers at scale. This paradigm shift to real-time, customer-centric PR, marketing and customer care strategies will continue to accelerate and differentiate those companies that take action.
Cision is a leader in news distribution and media monitoring and analysis with a media contact database of approximately one million journalists and media outlets and over 75,000 customers. Brandwatch works with thousands of the world’s most admired brands, using the latest in artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning to bring structure to and derive meaning from the voices of the billions of people using social media.
Cision and Brandwatch are a compelling combination. Together, they will provide brands and organisations with consumer and media intelligence to devise more effective customer engagement strategies from PR and marketing to research and product development. Whether teams are connecting with journalists and influencers, launching social campaigns, developing brand messaging or conducting deep research into consumer behaviour, they will have real-time insights and long-term trend analysis to guide them.
“The continued digital shift and widespread adoption of social media is rapidly and fundamentally changing how brands and organisations engage with their customers,” says Abel Clark, CEO of Cision. “This is driving the imperative that PR, marketing, social and customer care teams fully incorporate the unique insights now available into consumer-led strategies. Together, Cision and Brandwatch will help our clients to more deeply understand, connect and engage with their customers at scale across every channel.”
“We have always built Brandwatch with ambition. That was recognised by Forrester, who recently named us as a leader in our space,” says Giles Palmer, founder and CEO of Brandwatch. “Now is the time to take the next step – joining a company of significant scale to create a business and a suite of products that can have an important global impact. We are excited to join Abel and the Cision team to supercharge our work and bring even more value to our customers.”
Brandwatch was named a Leader in The Forrester Wave: Social Listening Platforms, Q4 2020.
The deal is expected to close in the second quarter of 2021.
Macquarie Capital acted as an exclusive financial adviser to Brandwatch on this transaction. Cooley LLP acted as legal counsel to Brandwatch.
Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP acted as M&A legal counsel, Willkie Farr & Gallagher LLP acted as financing legal counsel and Latham & Watkins LLP acted as regulatory counsel to Cision.
