Big Sofa Hires Flamingo Founder Kirsty Fuller

UK-based big data video analytics firm Big Sofa has appointed Flamingo co-founder and former CEO Kirsty Fuller as Chief Commercial Officer. She takes up the role on 1st October.

Big Sofa was founded in 2009 (then known as The Insight Exchange Partnership) by former Research International CEO Simon Lidington and organisational psychology specialist Matt Lynch, and offers a platform for users to upload, edit, analyse and share video and other digital content. The firm - in which Ipsos became an investor in March this year - recently launched a solution called Video Observer, which uses automated technology to analyse in-home and in-store behaviour captured 'anywhere in the world, at scale and in near real time'.

Fuller (pictured) co-founded consumer and cultural insight agency Flamingo in 1997 and sold it to Omnicom in 2007. She left the business last year, after Omnicom closed seven of Flamingo's eight global offices, citing 'underperformance'.

Commenting on the appointment, Lidington said: 'Having successfully grown a business from scratch to become one of the largest of its kind in the world, with several hundred employees, I believe Kirsty will be instrumental in helping to grow our company. We share the belief that observational methods led by video will transform the research industry. Kirsty's unrivalled expertise in consumer insight and Big Sofa's technology for capturing and analysing video at scale creates a powerful customer offering'.

Web site: www.bigsofatech.com .