Paragone – What defined us in 2021

Shai Alfandary, CEO, Paragone.ai

Wow! Another year has come and gone… And what a year it has been – Both from a personal and professional point of view!

There have been many exciting developments in the world of marketing, and I am proud that Paragone has been at the forefront of many of them. There were challenges galore but our team overcame many of them, assuming key milestones and achievements in the process.

Here are 5 which stood out to me:

1. The brand.

Rebranding from MakeMeReach to Paragone was a massive milestone. Paragone (Italian: paragone, meaning comparison) – a debate from the Italian Renaissance in which painting and sculpture (and to a degree, architecture), were each championed as superior to, and therefore distinct from each other – Wikipedia. We believe that nowadays a similar debate is happening in Marketing: Left side vs right side of the brain, Data vs. Creative, Ebony and Ivory.

With this in mind, we have built Paragone so both can live in perfect harmony, side by side on our platform. Most other tools pick a side – Paragone combines them all!

2. The product.

Moving to Paragone was a fundamental change for us as we realized that while customers seek help in managing performance across channels, they should be given the option to advertise through any tool they choose. This is how we architected Paragone: one overarching BI & Attribution tool for performance marketers with an option to take action and advertise through our platform, or any platform that you choose. This way, some of our customers choose to use the native tool to advertise while others, advertise through us, while all of them manage performance centrally using our platform. That’s the power of an open platform like paragone vs. other monoliths.

3. The reach.

The partnership we built with LinkedIn greatly exceeded my expectations. They embraced us as a go to partner in the High Consideration B2C space – More than we ever thought possible in such a short space of time. Examples for high consideration purchases include buying a car, a diamond ring, a TV or a computer, purchasing a house, an enterprise software solution, a bank, or even a dentist. Once you buy such an item, you typically don’t change it for a long time. We worked closely with LinkedIn’s team while exploring the luxury scene in Europe. The cherry on the top was our joint Keynote session in the Paris Luxury Summit event with Publicis & CBNews that took place this month in Paris.

4. The Go to market.

I’m very proud of our OEM strategy and the ability to run Paragone under a partner’s product. A great example of this is our partnership with Emplifi (Previously known as Social bakers); and the synergy created between organic & paid social. In 2022 we will have much more exciting news on this front. On a personal note, this is an opportunity I’m very interested in as it brings advertising to areas in the organization that have been very remote to it so far.

5. The growth.

We have seen incredible growth in terms of media volume that flew through our platform in 2021. This shows that not only the markets are back, but also that our platform is built for scale. Many of our customers have hit their spend allotment and plan to increase budgets which is a wonderful indicator for our projected 2022 growth.

As 2021 draws to a close, I would also like to take this opportunity to thank all of our partners, employees, community & friends who have continued to support us from the beginning, especially in MENA, EMEA, and the USA.

I wish you all a very happy holiday period and continued prosperity into 2022 and beyond!