Ex-Amazon Creative Head to Chair Pre-Test Start-Up DiO

Former Amazon Chief Creative Officer Simon Morris is to Chair newly formed audience insight platform DiO, which helps clients to pre-test ads, films, television shows and games by gauging and predicting the emotional response of audiences.

Liverpool, UK-based DiO brings together creatives, industry experts, data scientists and marketers. Film and TV producer Ade Shannon (The Vanishing, POMS and Six Minutes to Midnight) is its CEO and co-founder alongside senior strategist, customer insight and experience design expert Rick Curtis; while MD Claire Smith was formerly the VP of Strategy for Liverpool Football Club.

Morris (pictured), who will work alongside Shannon and Curtis, is the founder of LoveFilm and co-founder of digital publishing company 365 Corp. He spent nearly eleven years at Amazon as its Director of Advertising, adding the roles of Global Creative Director (from 2016) and Chief Creative Officer (from 2018). Between 1988-97 he worked in Marketing Director roles at Sega, Sky and HP.

'Within any creative endeavour there is a tension between art and commerce' says Shannon, 'but I have never believed they are mutually exclusive. The problem has been the tools used to guide creative decisions. I get lots of feedback that this process has often felt like creatives are 'having their homework marked' with their work being given a 'score'. DiO solves this by decoding the silent emotional reactions we all make, validating a creative's intuition to maximise commercial success. Whilst our roots are in film and media, we're on a mission to empower creativity everywhere'.

Thanks to www.marketing-beat.co.uk for some of the above. DiO is online at www.wearedio.com .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.