Issue 12 2021

CEO MONTHLY / ISSUE 10 2021 5 Leeds-based PR firm Igniyte, a specialist online reputation management and SEO agency, has expanded to the US and Canada, opening its first international base in New York. In the past six months, the online reputation management agency has added 20 new clients, including large telecoms providers, banks, cryptocurrency exchanges and high-net worth individuals across the US, UAE, and Europe. The agency, founded by Simon Wadsworth in 2009, has offices in Leeds and London and has 12 staff, with a further 2 vacancies. Igniyte’s new office in Manhattan, New York – the agency’s third office – will allow the firm to better offer their services into North America. The agency provides specialist services for both companies and individuals in removing damaging internet content, business reputation management, brand management, personal reputation management, crisis communication, SEO, and digital PR. Igniyte has recently hired two new account managers in the US and Canada from former reputationmanagement firms to aid the expansion. Igniyte has experienced strong growth due to the rising impact that brand reputation (reviews, complaints, forums, social media comments etc) and the personal reputation of senior leaders has on the financial state of businesses in the digital age. Simon Wadsworth, Founder and Managing Director of Igniyte, said: “We have been operating from the UK for over ten years now, and with the recent addition of some huge clients based in the US and Canada, the expansion to New York was an obvious move. “Our New York office will allow us to better serve customers in North America who require some support to improve their digital perception and presence. It also gives us access to a huge amount of digital marketing talent in the US. “More and more people are understanding that brand perception and personal online reputation needs to be front and centre of marketing strategy. Reputation management should be achieved by a strategic approach to positive content creation, disruptive campaign thinking, community engagement and above all, best-in-class SEO that takes control of what people find when they search about you. “Where everyone has a voice, it’s important that companies manage all channels and work hard to challenge damaging and unfair claims that affect their reputation and bottom line.” Igniyte are currently looking to add new account managers and PR specialists to their team with two live vacancies (Account Director and Account Manager). Simon says “We have a growing number of exciting and complex clients across the world that require creative solutions to improve their reputation. We are welcoming onboard talented individuals who can support our growth.” Leeds Online Reputation Management Agency Igniyte Expands To US and Canada and projects such as Axie Infinity, OpenSea, Dapper Labs (NBA Top Shot), Bitski, Harmony, Alien Worlds, and Star Atlas. “Gaming is one of the strong pillars of Web 2.0, reaching billions of users. Its large-scale real life use case makes it one of the core focus areas for crypto’s mass adoption to onboard retail consumers into the Web 3.0 world,” said Gwendolyn Regina, Investment Director at Binance Smart Chain. “With this co-investment, projects building on BSC will get the opportunity to gain insights and expertise from leading gaming giants such as Animoca Brands, along with collaboration opportunities with blockchain experts from the BSC Community. We look forward to working together with GameFi projects to build next-gen scalable blockchains and onboard the next one billion new users into crypto,” she added. BSC is one of the largest blockchain ecosystems with over 2.1 million daily active addresses in the past weeks. In 2021, games and play-to- earn opportunities on BSC have gone through a significant uptick in traffic and unique wallet interactions. BSC currently bolsters an ecosystem of crypto games including RPGs, strategy-battle arenas, sports, digital entertainment, adventure story based, logic, creative, and social games. The majority of BSC based gaming projects have developed NFT marketplaces and play-to-earn models with fungible tokens and/or NFT rewards. These GameFi projects have the potential to emerge as metaverses with their own inbuilt economy. “Early GameFi projects require funding to build their products, and need industry expertise for open-world gameplay and tokenomics, as well as networking opportunities to establish growth in the blockchain gaming and open metaverse. This investment program will provide these necessities to the projects that we think have the potential to take blockchain mainstream,” said Yat Siu, the Executive Chairman and Co- Founder of Animoca Brands. About Binance Smart Chain Binance Smart Chain is a sovereign smart contract blockchain delivering Ethereum Virtual Machine (EVM) compatible programmability. Designed to run in parallel with Binance Chain, Binance Smart Chain retains the former’s fast execution times and low transaction fees while adding Smart Contracts functionality to support compatible dApps. For more information on Binance Smart Chain, visit https://www.binance.org/#smartChain About Animoca Brands Animoca Brands, ranked in the Financial Times list of High Growth Companies Asia-Pacific 2021, is a leader in digital entertainment, blockchain, and gamification that is driving digital property rights via NFTs and gaming to help build the open metaverse. It develops and publishes a broad portfolio of products including the REVV token and SAND token; original games including The Sandbox, Crazy Kings, and Crazy Defense Heroes; and products utilizing hundreds of popular intellectual properties including Formula 1®, Disney, WWE, Power Rangers, MotoGP™, and Doraemon. The company has multiple subsidiaries, including The Sandbox, Blowfish Studios, Quidd, GAMEE, nWay, Pixowl, Bondly, and Lympo. Animoca Brands has a growing portfolio of more than 100 investments in NFT-related companies and decentralized projects that are contributing to building the open metaverse, including Axie Infinity, OpenSea, Dapper Labs (NBA Top Shot), Bitski, Harmony, Alien Worlds, Star Atlas, and others. For more information visit www.animocabrands. com or follow on Twitter or Facebook. About Binance Smart Chain $1B Growth Program Binance, the world’s leading blockchain ecosystem and cryptocurrency platform, launched a $1 billion Growth Program for Binance Smart Chain, to accelerate adoption of digital assets and blockchain technology in October 2021. The program is divided into 4 categories: $500M investment program, $100M Talent development, $100M Liquidity incentive and $300M Builder rewards. A range of multiple programs are set-up under its umbrella to empower the growth of cryptocurrencies worldwide. BSC’s growth attracted 100M+ DeFi users with its initial funding of $100 million. With the new contribution of $1B it plans to accelerate global mass adoption of digital assets to become the first-ever blockchain ecosystem with one billion users. For more information, visit - https://www.binance.org/en/1b-growth-fund