HALIFA X- Eighteen months after paying hundreds of miilions of dollars to buy a Fredericton-based social media marketing firm, Salesforce Marketing Cloud is laying off executives and employees at Radian6.
Salseforce.com signed a definitive agreement to purchase Radian6 in March 2011 for $326 million USD.
The deal to buy the 5-year-old firm was finalized in May 2011, with Salesforce paying $276 million in cash and $50 million in stock options.
Another $10 million in stock and $4 million in cash were paid to Radian6 founders Chris Newton and Chris Ramsey , rounding out the deal to $350 million.
Website Techvibes.com broke the news that employees learned about the layoffs on Wednesday, said to affect Radian6’s marketing and social media teams.
Several attempts were made to contact current and now-former employees but requests were not responded to in time for publication.
Global News contacted Radian6 in Fredericton, but no comment was given and the company deferred all queries to Salesforce Marketing Cloud headquarters in California.
In a statement via public relations firm Hill+Knowlton Strategies, Salesforce said:
“With the combination of Radian6 and Buddy Media, the Salesforce Marketing Cloud is the undisputed leader in social marketing and the only suite that allows brands to unify social listening, engagement, advertising and measurement. With the integration of Radian6 and Buddy Media, the Salesforce Marketing Cloud is re-balancing its resources to support its growth, including moving from a hub to a distributed model for certain customer-facing roles, consolidating marketing and dramatically increasing investments in R&D. Fewer than 100 people were impacted globally.
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Salesforce.com is incredibly committed to its business in Canada. Toronto remains our second largest office in North America and we will continue to invest in our Canadian offices from the Maritime provinces to Vancouver.”
There were no further details given as to where those layoffs occurred.
Radian6 has offices in Fredericton, Saint John, Halifax, Australia and the United Kingdom.
Most of its 420 employees (circa Dec. 2011) were based in the Maritimes.
Judging from comments made on social media, staff in New Brunswick and Nova Scotia have been cut.
Fortune 100 companies — including Molson Coors, 3M, Pepsico, UPS and Dell — are among the 2,400 customers that use Radian6’s social media monitor service to analyze sites such as Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIN and YouTube to see what people are saying about brands and use that information to better market their products.
The acquisition was one of 11 San Francisco-based Salesforce made between January 2011 and July 2012, which included the $689-million purchase of social media marketing firm Buddy Media. Staff at Buddy Media are also said to be affected by the job cuts.
Canadian social media aggregator Hootsuite, once considered to be a potential Salesforce acquisition, was one a number of companies offering job opportunities to laid off Radian6 and Buddy Media employees.
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