New partnership with KiwiLive expands Fern's ability to drive strategy through technology.
Cincinnati, OH - Fern, a leading national provider of marketing support and tradeshow services, recently made a strategic investment in KiwiLive, a mobile web platform for audience engagement during and after live events.
As a part of Fern's investment, KiwiLive's creator and CEO, Jeff Mason, has become Director of Customer Technology Innovation for Fern. In this role, Mason will drive strategy related to the delivery of Fern services through technology. According to Aaron Bludworth, President and CEO of Fern, Mason's specific focus will be on customer-facing technologies and customer user experience.
KiwiLive has been used by more than 2,000 events as a tool to enhance audience engagement. KiwiLive allows speakers, presenters, associations and event organizers to perform real-time audience polling, deliver documents to audience members electronically and strengthen attendee-to-attendee networking. "The result of using KiwiLive is that attendees immediately capture the exact information and connections they need," said Mason. "Meanwhile, event organizers can use the engagement data KiwiLive provides to serve their attendees even more effectively."
The partnership of the two companies accelerates Fern's technology-focused strategy of empowering organizations to grow relationships between audiences and brands. Fern has numerous strategic relationships with marketing and event technology organizations, which the company will continue to build and develop to offer integrated solutions and Fern proprietary technologies.
"Fern recognizes the increasing pervasiveness of technology in every aspect of commerce, especially 'big data' for targeted networking and sales," said Bludworth. "Our partnership in this transaction has the unique dimension of bringing Jeff into the Fern organization in a very strategic forward-thinking role."
A mechanical engineer turned entrepreneur, Mason holds degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He worked extensively as an engineer for two Fortune 500 companies before launching KiwiLive in 2014. In addition, he is a graduate of a prestigious business startup accelerator program.
About Fern
Fern (www.fernexpo.com) is a leading national marketing support and tradeshow services provider that provides unmatched customer service, best-in-class creativity and innovative solutions for exhibitions and large-scale events. Fern is among the top three face-to-face event service providers in North America serving more than 1,100 live events annually, including many top 100 shows and dozens of Fortune 500 companies.
About KiwiLive
KiwiLive (www.kiwilive.com) is a provider of event technology solutions that maximize the value of live events for attendees and supply valuable data to events to help them measure and improve their ROI. KiwiLive focuses on ease of use for attendees while offering instant information distribution, networking functionality, and audience feedback features.
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Contacts:
Jeff Mason, 309-507-2915
jeff@kiwilive.com