Creative collective House 337 has acquired conversational AI agency Vixen Labs as part of a strategic initiative to bolster its expertise in artificial intelligence and broaden its customer experience offer.
Vixen Labs is a leading full-service conversational AI agency and has a blue-chip client portfolio that includes Amazon, TuneIn, Verizon, Universal Music Group, Reckitt, McDonald’s and Barilla.
A specialist in building customer engagement through voice assistants and large language models, Vixen Labs designs, deploys and operates conversational interfaces through platforms such as Alexa and Siri, website chatbots and social apps. The agency also offers experience design, optimizing users’ interactions for enhanced usability, accessibility, aesthetics and satisfaction. Vixen seeks to create user-centric and memorable conversational experiences between brands and their customers.
Vixen Labs is also the pioneer of the AI Consumer Index report, the 2023 edition of which shows that a third of U.K. and U.S. consumers are already using conversational AI tools on a weekly basis.
Co-founded in 2018 by James Poulter, an innovation strategist who previously worked at The LEGO Group and Edelman, and voice experience and brand innovation expert Jen Heape, previously of agencies such as AKQA and Framestore, Vixen Labs has teams based in the U.K., Germany and the U.S.
Vixen Labs will initially operate as a separate brand within House 337 reporting into James Thornett, executive director customer experience. Vixen Labs will sit within the design, data and technology capability group under Thornett.
All current and future Vixen Labs clients will automatically be assessed against the House 337 ethical AI positioning which SHOOT outlined here in November.
Phil Fearnley, group CEO at House 337, said, “Vixen Labs is a fantastic addition to the House 337 collective and one that deepens our AI offer and expands the horizons of customer experience. Our clients will win big from this deal, as we build and share knowledge of conversational AI and its indispensable role in creating long term relationships between businesses and customers.”
Poulter, CEO of Vixen Labs, said, “Joining House 337, one of the UK’s foremost creative agencies, gives Vixen Labs a fantastic opportunity to continue our groundbreaking conversational AI work and help more great brands build the next generation of customer experiences.”
Heape, COO of Vixen Labs, said, “We’re thrilled by this opportunity to pair our expertise with a like-minded organization, which helps us expand into new areas and boost our international presence.”
House 337 is a collective that merges the Titanium-Grand-Prix-winning creative agency Engine Creative and fashion and lifestyle specialist creative agency ODD Group.
Services for brands include advertising and communications, brand consulting, experience design, editorially driven social content, and AI and innovation. House 337 clients include Sky, E.ON, Santander, JD Williams, Women’s Aid and the Cannes Lions Titanium-Grand Prix-winning Kiyan Prince Foundation.
Jennifer Kent On Why Her Feature Directing Debut, “The Babadook,” Continues To Haunt Us
"The Babadook," when it was released 10 years ago, didn't seem to portend a cultural sensation.
It was the first film by a little-known Australian filmmaker, Jennifer Kent. It had that strange name. On opening weekend, it played in two theaters.
But with time, the long shadows of "The Babadook" continued to envelop moviegoers. Its rerelease this weekend in theaters, a decade later, is less of a reminder of a sleeper 2014 indie hit than it is a chance to revisit a horror milestone that continues to cast a dark spell.
Not many small-budget, first-feature films can be fairly said to have shifted cinema but Kent's directorial debut may be one of them. It was at the nexus of that much-debated term "elevated horror." But regardless of that label, it helped kicked off a wave of challenging, filmmaker-driven genre movies like "It Follows," "Get Out" and "Hereditary."
Kent, 55, has watched all of this — and those many "Babadook" memes — unfold over the years with a mix of elation and confusion. Her film was inspired in part by the death of her father, and its horror elements likewise arise out of the suppression of emotions. A single mother (Essie Davis) is struggling with raising her young son (Noah Wiseman) years after the tragic death of her husband. A figure from a pop-up children's book begins to appear. As things grow more intense, his name is drawn out in three chilling syllables — "Bah-Bah-Doooook" — an incantation of unprocessed grief.
Kent recently spoke from her native Australia to reflect on the origins and continuing life of "The Babadook."
Q: Given that you didn't set out to in any way "change" horror, how have you regarded the unique afterlife of "The... Read More