Turn the Page Again – An Announcement from Addvocate-Trapit CEO, Gary Griffiths

“When you’re finished changing, you’re finished.” – Benjamin Franklin

It wasn’t long ago – less than a year – that I wrote about the first significant change to our business. It was a difficult but necessary decision to abandon our then popular free consumer service. Today is also about change, but instead of shutting something down, we’re expanding. Expanding our product offerings, expanding our team, and hopefully expanding our opportunities.

Today we are announcing the merger of Addvocate and Trapit. Not only a change for Addvocate and Trapit but also a major change for the marketplace and how content marketing needs will be met.

We all know the market is fragmented – literally hundreds of companies attacking different elements of the problems you face in reaching prospective companies. We heard from many of our customers and prospects that they had to purchase many point solutions to get what was needed to execute their marketing plans. We listened, and we decided to be aggressive and be on the leading edge of many more expected mergers and acquisitions in the industry. We wanted to be first to deliver a truly comprehensive solution to meet your needs. We decided to make a change. We decided to merge two companies.

Addvocate and Trapit have much in common; California-based startups, venture backed, both looking to build a successful business serving the increasingly expanding market broadly defined as Content Marketing.

But our two companies are very different, as well. Addvocate’s operations are contained solely in San Francisco. While Trapit maintains headquarters in San Francisco, our small company is decentralized, with our largest office in Portland, Oregon.

Prior to our merger, we were addressing this large market from different perspectives. For Addvocate, it was about enabling a company’s entire work force to generate, curate, and share information in the interest of building awareness for the brand or product. It’s a powerful concept – employee advocacy – one in which every single employee becomes an extension of the marketing team. Meanwhile, Trapit’s approach focused on content: the discovery, curation, and distribution of highly relevant, real-time content to the audience our customers are trying to reach. For content is the currency in which marketers trade.

This difference between Addvocate and Trapit is critical, for together we deliver a complete range of capabilities needed by marketing leaders as they execute their content marketing strategies. The new platform combines the power of discovery (both machine and user-generated), curation, distribution, and amplification of highly relevant content. All of this is integrated with analytic tools to help marketers determine what content is working and what is not, thus providing the insight needed to derive real ROI.

This change allows us to solve two real problems: 1) marketers are able to get the right content, at the right time, and they can deliver it through the right channels; and 2) they can do it all within one solution. Trapit brings the unsurpassed power of its AI/Machine Learning content discovery and curation platform, while Addvocate empowers employees to amplify the voice of the brand in a very human way.

You can read about the power of this combination in our press release. As you can imagine, I want to talk about change. And culture.

Like people, every company has a unique personality. Both companies have built brands they are proud of, and they have developed work styles and routines that are familiar and comfortable. And now that changes, for both sides. We will embrace this change so as to provide an even better experience for our customers. This will be evident in a richer, more complete solution, continued focus on excellence in execution, an undying passion for our customers’ coupled with even more excitement about winning in the marketplace.

I will not trivialize that we have work to do to ensure that our objectives are achieved. Change is hard. Mergers are hard. Mergers require give and take.

But rest assured that we will adapt accordingly so the new company emerges better and stronger than before. Our identity will be forged in how well we serve our customers. From listening to your needs and responding with the delivery of a high-quality solution, to sales integrity, to informative marketing, thought leadership, and most importantly customer success.

We believe that the combination of Addvocate and Trapit position us to do just that and to do it better than anyone else.

As a result of this merger, there will be more choices, more service, more resources. And of course, more cash, thanks to a new infusion of capital led by Rogers Venture Partners of Palo Alto. Trust that I realize that the challenge will be combining the best of two cultures, creating one that is unique and stronger than either alone.

We are all excited about today’s news and ask that you reach out to us to learn more about our plans and how you can benefit immediately. Embrace the change with us.

-Gary Griffiths, CEO of Addvocate-Trapit