Variety and Canva Host Happy-Hour Reception During NYC’s Advertising Week
A packed crowd of marketing and media pros bent elbows at Variety and Canva’s cocktail reception Tuesday, kicking off the partners’ interview studio taking place during 2023 Advertising Week.
Madison Avenue leaders mingled at the invite-only event, held on the rooftop at the Ned NoMad hotel in Manhattan on a picture-perfect fall evening in New York. The reception was to celebrate new leaders in marketing and advertising and also part of Variety and Canva’s three-day interview series in New York, taking place Oct. 17-19, featuring conversations with thought-leaders about branding, storytelling, audience engagement, AI and innovation, success strategies, future trends and more. Interviews from the Variety Interview Studio, the first to take place during Advertising Week, will be featured on Variety.com.
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Canva co-founder COO Cliff Obrecht delivered brief remarks, thanking attendees for coming out. He said the company is “very excited to be working with all the media partners and advertisers here in New York and globally” — adding, “Drink up, people, have fun!”
Variety co-editor-in-chief Ramin Setoodeh thanked Canva for its partnership on the interview studio and cocktail reception. “We love collaborating with Canva,” he said, adding “we’re very, very excited about all the great coverage that we’re getting here” at Advertising Week.
Attendees at the happy-hour gathering partook in Canva’s Creative Juices, an array of signature cocktails and juices crafted in collaboration with Joe & the Juice.
Launched in 2013, Canva’s online design and collaboration platform features a simple drag-and-drop user interface and templates for presentations, documents, websites, social media graphics, posters, apparel and videos, along with a library of fonts, stock photography, illustrations, video footage and audio and song clips. Earlier this month, Canva launched Magic Studio, which it describes as “the world’s most comprehensive AI-design platform” letting users “boost their creativity, supercharge their productivity and scale their brands.”
Canva says it has 16 million paying subscribers for its design-tools platform. Overall, the company counts more than 150 million monthly users, an increase of some 65 million in the past year. Canva is based in Sydney, Australia, with office locations worldwide.
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