• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, January 3, 2022

Stagwell told investors in November about The Stagwell Marketing Cloud -- a suite of SaaS products the company is developing for use as in-house marketing tools. 

The company is launching its latest SaaS product this week at CES. It’s a location-based augmented-reality platform called ARound. 

The platform is designed for live venues, such as stadiums, as well as retailers with the main idea of creating scaled, shared AR experiences for spectators and customers. 

The platform is the brainchild of founder-CEO Josh Beatty, who won investment capital and other resources from Stagwell via an innovation competition the firm holds every year. With its investment, Stagwell is the majority owner and founder partner of ARound, while Beatty and others involved in the effort retain minority stakes. 

“Until now, AR has focused on the individual, but ARound recognizes the best connections come from shared experiences that connect individuals to the world around them,” said Beatty. 

Consumers interact on the platform via smartphones. Beatty says that while devices can often cause distraction, the new offering “enables users to be more present at events, connecting people and places through shared technology.” 

The platform is currently being tested by retailer H&M and an undisclosed Major League Baseball team. 

Demos of the new service are being offered at several venues during CES this week. 

Other SaaS products in the Stagwell Marketing Cloud include PRophet, an AI PR tool that helps determine how a piece of news will be received before it’s pitched. Another product is an influencer-marketing platform called Koalifyed, developed with P&G.

A third is called CUE, or Consumer Understanding Engagement, a platform that crunches first-party and other data to create target audiences for clients.