Just after acquiring Signal, BrightTag changes its name

by Carlin Sack
June 10, 2014

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Weeks after marketing technology platform BrightTag announced its acquisition of fellow Chicago tech company Signal, the company officially changed its name to Signal. The name change aims to reflect the combined company’s focus on helping marketers strengthen the signals between brands and customers.

The 1871-based company previously known as Signal, which provided marketing software to SMBs, had about four people on its team before it joined forces with the 100-person BrightTag team last month. The acquisition brought back together BrightTag CEO Mike Sands and and Signal CEO Jeff Judge, who were both former execs at Orbitz and have a long history of supporting Chicago tech.

“Consumers are engaging with brands across a variety of devices and channels multiple times a day, from multiple locations – while at the same time, the proliferation of tools and technologies available to marketers is like nothing I’ve seen in my 20 years in digital marketing,” Sands wrote in a blog post today. “The volume of signals from all these interactions is exploding – and so is the noise.”

All this noise is why the combined company is also announcing today the launch of its Open Data Platform, which allows marketers to collect data from online and offline sources, synchronize it and distribute it to any marketing or analytics endpoint – across multiple channels and devices. Crate & Barrel, one of BrightTag’s existing customers, is one of the first customers already using the Open Data Platform. Also on the existing customer list (now Signal's customer list) are Allstate, Audi, GAP, JetBlue Airways, Macy’s, 1-800-Flowers.

“Clients tell us they’ve typically invested in about 17 different marketing technologies – and few of those tools are able to talk with one another because the challenge of integrating them is so daunting,” Sands wrote. "We’re looking ahead to an exciting future as Signal, the global leader in real-time, cross-channel marketing technologies.”

[video:http://vimeo.com/97679719]

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