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Quiq Welcomes CX Veterans Mike Zinne as First Chief Experience Officer and Cristina Bravo Olmo as SVP of Marketing

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Leader in Customer-facing AI Agent Deployments Prepares for Next Stage of Growth as Enterprise Confidence in Generative AI Increases and Buying Accelerates

BOZEMAN, Mont., Sept. 30, 2024 /PRNewswire/ — Quiq, the leader in customer-centric AI for CX, is bolstering its executive bench and CX expertise with the addition of two former Zendesk leaders: Mike Zinne and Cristina Bravo Olmo. Zinne will lead Client Services, Customer Support, Customer Success, Solution Consulting, and Professional Services, and Bravo Olmo will oversee all aspects of Marketing at Quiq.

According to Forrester, “Conversational AI is entering an entirely new phase, thanks to genAI and LLMs. Usable chatbots and IVAs that will deliver far better customer (and employee) experiences – plus those much-vaunted cost savings – are finally within reach for brands. Specifically, genAI and LLMs will improve conversational AI for brands by: massively reducing application development time…reaping significant ROI that will only rise…[and] making usable, friendly chatbots the norm.” (The State Of Conversational AI, Forrester Research, Inc., 6 September 2024.) A complimentary copy of the report is available here.

Both executives are critical hires as an increasing number of enterprise brands turn to vendors with deep CX expertise, like Quiq, when building industry- and brand-specific AI agents. Simultaneously, current Quiq customers are rapidly expanding into new cases, including those that are customer-facing, as trust in Quiq’s customer-centric AI for CX grows. As a result, Quiq’s daily conversation volume has nearly doubled year over year in each  of the past five years.

“There is no one better at delivering client service in the CX space than Zinne,” said Quiq Founder and CEO Mike Myer. “It’s hard to find someone who is truly an expert in building authentic relationships with enterprise executives, mastering technical details, and establishing scalable processes, but Zinne possesses all of these skills and much more. I worked with him at RightNow and then Oracle after the acquisition, and I have been hoping to work with him again ever since. I’m thrilled to welcome Zinne back to my team.”

Zinne will make his first public appearance on behalf of Quiq at Customer Contact Week (CCW) in Amsterdam on October 7. He will join Quiq customers, Panasonic Head of Customer Service Governance Adam Neale, and Panasonic Digital Service Manager Eugen Majeri, in leading a workshop entitled, “A Path to Personalized CX that Maximises Business Outcomes.” If you are attending CCW and would like to meet with Zinne or another member of the Quiq team, please contact Press@Quiq.com.

“This is a great time to be in CX SaaS and I’m honored to join Quiq in its quest to keep consumers at the center of every decision as more and more brands embrace AI,” said Zinne. “I am confident that combining all of our technical interactions with clients into a single team will help us accelerate our clients’ successes and turn their customers into brand loyalists.”

Previously, Zinne was the Chief Customer Officer at Outreach, the VP of Customer Experience at Zendesk, and the VP of Sales Consulting at Oracle. Mike has a proven track record of building and scaling world-class professional services and customer success teams. He has successfully managed global customer organizations and thrives on delivering custom yet simple approaches to customer experiences. While his passion is customer delight, Mike has experience in a wide range of executive roles and is an asset in managing profitability and growth in SaaS organizations.

“Cristina is phenomenal at putting herself in the shoes of our clients and seeing everything we produce through their eyes, which is critical when you’re working with emerging technology,” added Myer. “I am an engineer by trade so I can ensure our product is best-in-class, but I depend on domain superstars, like Cristina and Zinne to tell the Quiq story and deliver CX results. They will be instrumental in Quiq’s growth because they are the best at converting clients into champions and ensuring every CX leader who believes in the value of seamless journeys and is relentless in their pursuit of CX excellence knows the Quiq name.”

Previously, Bravo Olmo held marketing leadership roles at Sigma Computing, Wrike, Zendesk, Marketo, and Trend Micro. She has extensive B2B SaaS marketing experience, a legacy of building successful go-to-market strategies, and a proven ability to lead high-performance teams. While at Zendesk, Bravo Olmo was a key member of the internal IPO team, and while at Marketo, she founded Marketing Nation, the company’s customer community.

“Since Zendesk, my heart has been in CX. I have been waiting for the right company to come along so I can return to it, and I found what I have been looking for in Quiq,” said Bravo Olmo. “The CX space had been more or less stagnant since the first wave of cloud-native solutions transformed how brands engage with consumers in the early 2010s. The introduction of Generative AI has brought much needed excitement to the space, and I am thrilled to join a company that is leading customer-centric AI for CX innovation.”

About Quiq
Quiq is an AI for CX platform and the leader in customer-centric AI for CX. Quiq creates best-in-class solutions that enable seamless customer journeys across channels and between AI agents and humans. Built by CX and AI experts, Quiq delivers on the promise of generative AI by driving revenue, reducing costs, and improving CX outcomes. With Quiq’s AI Studio, enterprise brands get the best of “build” with control and customization, and the best of “buy” with expert support, security, and scalability. The world’s leading brands, including Terminix, Volvo, and IHG Hotels & Resorts, trust Quiq to improve CX outcomes. Learn how your team can be their best https://quiq.com/.

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SOURCE QUIQ, INC.

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Canton Fair Buyers Alliance Launched as the 140th Edition Opens

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4 hours ago

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October 18, 2026

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GUANGZHOU, China, Oct. 17, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — On October 15, the Canton Fair Buyers Alliance was officially launched at the Canton Fair Complex, marking a significant milestone as the fair celebrates the 70th anniversary of its founding.

More than 140 overseas buyers attended the launch ceremony, highlighting the fair’s enduring role as a bridge connecting global commerce with China’s export sector.

Speaking at the ceremony, Luís Vilariça, CEO of Joinco, Import & Export, Ltd., discussed his company’s long-standing relationship with the Canton Fair. Drawing on years of participation, he reflected on the growth opportunities created through cooperation with Chinese suppliers and highlighted the fair’s role in supporting international business development and global trade exchanges.

The ceremony also featured a joint declaration by alliance members. Representatives from five member companies read the statement in their respective native languages, underscoring the international character of the new organization. Additional members sent video congratulatory messages, joining the celebration and witnessing the official launch of the alliance.

The Canton Fair Buyers Alliance represents one of the fair’s key service innovations. Designed primarily for Fortune Global 500 companies, buyers from the world’s top 250 retailers and leading sourcing enterprises across a diverse range of markets, the alliance aims to offer members a platform for information sharing and resource coordination. The first cohort of alliance members includes 58 companies from 32 countries and regions across 5 continents. Through the alliance, members will gain access to a range of priority benefits spanning four major areas: services, events, resources and information.

 For more convenient attendance, please click here for pre-registration:

https://buyer.cantonfair.org.cn/register/buyer/email?source_type=16

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SOURCE Canton Fair

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Bioethanol from human hair – Indian start-up’s solution to rising prices of grains and sugar

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5 hours ago

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October 18, 2026

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GUJARAT, India, Oct. 17, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — In what could be called the beginning of the 5G (fifth-generation) of bioethanol or non-cellulosic bioethanol or non-sugar-based biofuels, an Indian start-up, Techofest Global, based out of Gujarat, has developed its own, indigenous, and patented technology for the production of bioethanol from waste human hair. Such processes would significantly reduce the employment of sugars, grains, and agricultural residues, which form the classical first- and second-generation bioethanol feedstocks. As a result, the rising fuel-vs.-food/fodder debate is anticipated to reduce, and instead, ethanol produced from municipal/industrial waste, after trials, can supplement the current supply being used as blends with presently retailed fossil fuels (E20, E27, etc.). 

As stated by Dr. Ravi, the founder-CEO of Techofest Global, the strategic priority and the USP of the start-up is industrial symbiosis, which, typically, involves an ecosystem of up-cycling/valorising the effluents of an industry, thereby creating a value-chain for residues often lacking an end-of-life. With more than three decades of experience in designing customized nuclear fusion reactors for international programmes, such as ITER, JET/UKAEA and SST-1, Dr. Ravi, a seasoned mechanical engineer, spearheads the start-up’s patented technologies’ scale-up and commercialization.

Two biochemical engineers, Dr. Navnit – the former CTO, and Dr. Kabilan – the former CEO of Biomakerz, Chennai, are the brains behind the current technology/process portfolio of the joint-venture between Techofest Global and Biomakerz. They have been working on biorefineries’ process intensification for more than a decade. “Having foreseen the fuel-vs-fodder/food competition as early as the year 2015, we began developing techno-economically feasible and viable in-vitro metabolically-engineered bioprocesses for scaling-up ethanol production from municipal waste streams between 2019–2021”, says Navnit. After developing operational technologies for international biofuel organizations, serving process engineer roles with certain biorefineries-related OMC R&D’s of India, Dr. Navnit, presently works for a premier academic institution.

An on-going fermentation trial at the Techofest Global-Biomakerz JV’s R&D facility

Techofest Global has developed and tested, in its R&D JV’s pilot-facility of ~100-L, 3 innovative and cost-effective technologies, such as 5G ethanol production using human hair, used cooking oil (UCO), and enriched bio-methane production from disposed sanitary napkins.

“With massive CapEx and OpEx, 2G ethanol technology is facing a major commercialization bottleneck, owing to competition with food/livestock fodder, requirement of a cost-intensive pre-treatment procedure, and the requirement of cellulolytic cocktails, which have a poor recycle efficiency. The proprietary 5G SAFE process developed for the start-up circumvents the mentioned constraints, and instead, utilizes a single-stage saccharification followed by fermentation, and records over 85–90% biocatalyst recovery. Likewise, the proprietary SIM process for bio-methane production, exclusively developed for the start-up, is 2x faster with improved intermittent feeding cycles and continuous gas harvest”, says Navnit.

“With on-going pre-commercialization trials, the proprietary ethanol and bio-methane processes of ours are soon being commercialized”, says Ms. Bhumika, the co-founder and the corporate advisor of the start-up. Furthermore, Mr. Ronak pilots the organization’s global market entry and commercialization frontier.

Techofest Global’s veteran Principal Technology Advisors include: Dr VS Tripathi, former Joint Director, DRDE Gwalior, Dr B S Munjal, former Director, Structures and Thermal group, SAC/ISRO, Academician and Advisor CIKS-Dharohar, GTU, and Dr AV Santhanababu, former Scientist at Satish Dhawan Space Centre. With on-going R&D activities, Dr. Munjal says, “the start-up is striving to provide a unique solution along the lines of the Atmanirbhar and Viksit Bharat Vision 2047”.

Media Contact: www.techofestglobal.com; e-mail: info@techofestglobal.com; contact person: The PR team of Techofest Global.

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As AI Speeds Up Marketing, Louisville’s RedTag Bets on Strategy

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10 hours ago

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October 17, 2026

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Independent agency unveils new brand and website, and co-hosts Louisville’s PROOF AI Workshop

LOUISVILLE, Ky., Oct. 17, 2026 /PRNewswire/ — RedTag, an independent Louisville-based marketing agency, this month unveiled new positioning, marking its evolution from a digital performance agency into a strategy-first marketing partner. The move comes as AI makes execution faster than ever, and RedTag is betting that strategy, not speed, is what will set businesses apart. Clients can now choose from outcome-based programs that best fit their marketing needs. 

“Clients don’t come to us needing more tactics. They come to us needing a path,” said Russ Renbarger, founder and CEO of RedTag. “Our new brand says out loud what our work has shown for years: We start with strategy and build everything on that foundation.”

RedTag built its reputation on high-performing paid digital campaigns. Over the years, the agency expanded into strategy, creative, video production and website development, giving clients one partner for the full scope of their marketing. Most recently, a team of automation specialists has integrated AI across the agency to speed up production and analysis, guided by an internal AI policy that keeps people accountable for quality. The time AI saves goes back into strategy: knowing what to say, who to say it to and why.

“Our best client relationships have always been partnerships, where we’re in the room when the big decisions get made,” said Alison Conway, chief client officer at RedTag. “This evolution is about bringing that strategic partnership to every client.”

On Oct. 14, RedTag co-hosted the PROOF AI Workshop with Slingshot, Vsimple and Advanced Business Solutions. The hands-on event gave Louisville business leaders practical experience applying AI to their own work. RedTag led the event’s AI in Marketing and Branding track, with four sessions ranging from AI search optimization to a playbook for adopting AI across an organization.

“AI can produce hundreds of ads in an afternoon, but it can’t tell you which one your brand actually needs and why,” Renbarger said. “The faster the tools get, the more valuable human-led strategy becomes.”

RedTag was named the agency of record for the Commonwealth of Kentucky in 2025. Its client list includes PGA of America, Castle & Key Distillery, Bourbon Barrel Foods, ShopCaterpillar and American Beverage Marketers. Since 2023, RedTag’s work has received two Emmy Awards and more than 35 ADDY and AIGA awards. The agency is a four-time Louisville Business First Fast 50 honoree and was named one of the 2026 Best Places to Work in Kentucky.

To learn more about its outcome-based programs, visit RedTag Programs

About RedTag

RedTag is an independent, strategy-first marketing agency based in Louisville, Kentucky. Established in 2008, the agency starts every engagement by understanding the goal before recommending tactics. With a foundation rooted in discovery, RedTag delivers full-scale marketing campaigns built around each client’s business goals. RedTag serves organizations across hospitality, sports, agriculture, government, retail and consumer packaged goods. Learn more at redtag.agency.

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SOURCE RED TAG LLC

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