ZOO expands international team with three hires

REACH

2 February 2021

ZOO DIGITAL GROUP PLC

("ZOO", the "Group" or the "Company")

ZOO expands international team with three strategic hires

ZOO Digital, a world-leading provider of cloud-based localisation and media services to the global entertainment industry, has made three strategic hires as part of its talent management programme to enhance ZOO's dubbing capabilities and bring in new talent across its European and other key markets:

·      Dave Concors joins ZOO as Head of Sound;

·      Mariusz Jaworowski joins as Creative Director for Central and Eastern European (CEE) Dubbing; and

·      Andreas Kaj joins as Dubbing Territory Manager for the Nordic region.

Following a significant increase in the adoption of cloud dubbing services throughout 2020 and the Company's success building its dubbing services in Latin America, ZOO is focused on expanding its in-territory expertise across Europe, the Middle East and South East Asia to fulfil projects from leading global content providers.

ZOO's talent management function has been established to identify experienced candidates to become advocates for ZOO across key territories, using their extensive networks of contacts to bring exceptional talent to the business.

Dave Concors, Head of Sound

Dave Concors, an Emmy Award Winner for 'outstanding sound mixing', has more than 30 years' experience working in features and episodic content as well as on foreign theatrical releases. His mixing work includes projects for Disney, Marvel, Pixar and Lucasfilm. As Head of Sound, Dave will further develop the dubbing services offered by ZOO to Hollywood clients and streaming service providers by establishing theatrical-quality audio mixing through an efficient, streamlined process.

Mariusz Jaworowski, Creative Director for CEE Dubbing

Mariusz Jaworowski, who joins as Creative Director for CEE Dubbing, brings over 21 years' experience as Executive Director at Disney. He also spent eight years providing dubbing direction services for leading content owners including NBCUniversal, HBO and Amazon. At ZOO, Mariusz will oversee the quality for all dubbing titles within the territories he oversees; these will include Poland, Russia, the Balkans, the Baltics, Czech Republic, Hungary and Greece. Mariusz will be building a high-quality ZOO dubbing talent pool in CEE. This hand-picked dubbing supply chain will enable ZOO to better serve its clients in the region and expand its in-territory expertise.

Andreas Kaj, Dubbing Territory Manager for the Nordic region

As Dubbing Territory Manager for the Nordic region, Andreas Kaj brings over 12 years' experience as International Senior Production Manager at SDI Media, where he managed the dubbing content for companies including Warner Bros in the Nordics, Benelux and Polish territories and The LEGO Group in over 30 languages. At ZOO, Andreas will be responsible for delivering high quality dubbed projects to ZOO's global clients in Sweden, Norway, Finland and Denmark. He will also build a high-quality pool of talent and develop a larger dedicated territory management team for the region.

ZOO's cloud dubbing technology enables the business to work with more talent and dubbing studios in more locations, opening up the industry to the next generation and providing opportunities to those actors, directors and adaptors not located in traditional dubbing hubs. ZOO's cloud dubbing service supports remote recording, which has enabled ZOO to continue offering its dubbing services throughout the global pandemic, enabling the business to increase engagement with dubbing customers due to the differentiated benefits of its technology.

Stuart Green, Chief Executive Officer, said:

"I am delighted to welcome Dave, Mariusz and Andreas to the business. These significant additions to our expanding international team are a clear demonstration of our rapid growth plan for our dubbing services as we seek to attract exceptional talent to ZOO.

"Each brings considerable technical and industry experience and will be a key member of the team as we position the business as a leading provider of end-to-end localisation and media services to the entertainment industry in an expanding global market."

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About ZOO Digital Group plc:

ZOO Digital supports major Hollywood studios and streaming services to globalise their content and reach audiences everywhere, by providing world-leading, technology-enabled localisation and media services.

Founded in 2001, ZOO Digital operates from hubs in Los Angeles, London and Dubai, with a development and production centre in Sheffield, UK. The company is targeting $100m sales in the medium term.

The Group provides media services through its platforms that include: ZOOsubs, ZOOdubs, ZOOstudio. Its full-service proposition delivers the end-to-end services required to prepare both original and catalogue content for digital distribution; these services include dubbing, subtitling & captioning, metadata creation & localisation, artwork localisation and media processing. Alongside this offering, ZOO also provides its customers with management platforms and strategic solutions to support their own internal globalisation operations.

ZOO is a go-to service partner for media businesses looking to globalise their content across different territories, languages and distribution platforms. Using its innovative technology-enabled approach, ZOO helps its customers to reduce time to market, lower costs and deliver high quality products to their global audiences. The business has frameworks in place with all major Hollywood studios and streaming services. Its customers include Disney, NBCUniversal, HBO and ViacomCBS.

ZOO's competitive advantage arises from three interlinking factors - the leading role it has played in the digital transformation of its sector; the world class proprietary platforms that it develops to enable this transformation; and the global supply chain of thousands of freelancers, working collaboratively in ZOO's platforms, which delivers services that scale easily to meet demand. These factors combine to make ZOO uniquely geared to capitalise on new market opportunities in a fast-paced and constantly evolving industry.