[July 23, 2014]

Addvocate Launches New Employee Advocacy Platform, Appoints New CEO

Addvocate, the company that enables businesses' employees to become brand advocates, today announced the launch of its latest SaaS (News - Alert) based employee advocacy platform, Addvocate 2. This latest update includes new functionality that makes it easy for employees to consume and share content with their social networks. The company also announced the appointment of Piers Cooper as CEO. Cooper, a former Oracle (News - Alert) executive, joined Addvocate a little over a year ago as COO and was instrumental in building out the business, as well as guiding the company through its Series A funding round.

Social media marketing and, in particular, employee advocacy is becoming a highly effective marketing channel. Recommendations that come from a known source are more effective than even the best targeted digital ads. According to a Nielsen study, 84% of consumers trust recommendations from people they know, compared to 42% who trust banner ads and only 37% who trust mobile text ads.

"The promise of social media marketing is being realized with employee advocacy," said Cooper. "Social media is about making authentic human connections and we've built Addvocate 2 with that in mind." Cooper continue, "We believe that it's ineffective for marketing teams to 'force feed' employees with canned content and expect them to share it. If they do, it usually appears contrived and modern consumers are too savvy to respond well to this type of content. Addvocate gives a voice to employees and that's what incentivizes them to share. This type of authentic sharing creates much more engagement and will ultimately help companies build stronger brand equity."

Addvocate 2 is a complete rebuild of the product. The interface has been modernized and streamlined, making it easy for users to interact with the platform. New and updated functionality includes:

• Feed: The new feed makes discovering and sharing content easy and fun. Posts include images and are sortable by user and group. Users now have more flexibility when posting and can determine where posts appear and who can see them.
• Moderation: Marketers now have more flexibility when moderating users and groups, including the ability to suspend and delete posts. This provides control with content that might not be aligned with a company's brand identity.
• Browser Extensions: Browser extensions are now available for Chrome, Safari and Firefox. This makes it very easy for users to share content from anywhere they're browsing the web and consuming content. No more cutting and pasting links.
• Mobile App: Most of social media is consumed on the go. Addvocate's mobile app lets users be advocates for their company wherever they are.
• Directory: The new Directory feature enables a user to see content posted by another user.

Over 600 companies are using the original version of Addvocate and many are quickly migrating to Addvocate 2, including: Vology, Corporate Resource Services and Export Development Canada.

"We evaluated several employee advocacy platforms and Addvocate stood out as the one that anyone across our organization could use, not just something for our marketers," said Brooke Ballard, head of digital marketing, CRS. "Addvocate is user-centric, intuitive and scalable. Our employees now have the ability to share what they want, in their own voice."

About Addvocate

Addvocate believes that great companies are defined by the people behind the brand name. With Addvocate's technology, companies can identify and empower their employees with our easy-to-use platform for creating and sharing amazing content across social channels. Want to learn more? Visit addvocate.com.

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