The Albany Gazette - HarrisQuest Launches Lou, a Voice-Enabled AI Analyst Built Inside The Harris Poll's Brand Tracking Platform

NEW YORK CITY, NY / ACCESS Newswire / April 6, 2026 / HarrisQuest, part of Stagwell's The Marketing Cloud (NASDAQ:STGW) and powered by The Harris Poll, today announced the launch of Lou, an AI analyst built natively inside HarrisQuest, the brand tracking platform within The Marketing Cloud. Designed by researchers for researchers, HarrisQuest enables global brands to track brand and corporate reputation consistently across 24 global markets, and Lou delivers the "why" behind the data in seconds.

"We knew this insights agent was so powerful it had to be named in honor of Lou (our founder, Louis Harris)," says John Gerzema, CEO of The Harris Poll. "Powered by over seventy years of proven research methodology and trusted brand data, Lou delivers expert-grade insights at scale and extends trusted intelligence to every corner of the organization."

Lou works inside HarrisQuest with full access to the brand's data and saved analyses. It never needs to be briefed and operates around the clock. Unlike chat-based AI assistants layered onto generic dashboards, Lou executes directly inside the platform: building custom segments, rendering custom reports, applying filters, and surfacing strategic insights in real time. Most analyses are completed in less than 10 seconds. Just speak or type a question to Lou, and it acts.

AI That Acts, Not Just Answers

Lou isn't an AI analyst that simply summarizes, it will act as an extension of your team running in the background. Lou pulls reports, custom views, and surfaces insights on your brand's shifts and changes.

"Most AI in this category can summarize what has already happened. Lou is built to work directly in the data," said Jonathan Gardner, CEO, HarrisQuest. "It builds the cut, renders the view, applies the filters, and helps teams understand what changed, what matters, and where to look first. We didn't add AI to a dashboard. We put an analyst inside a measurement system."

Lou's capabilities include:

1. Custom Audience Segment Building: Customizable configuration by generation, geography, political ideology, income, or any combination, including bulk Designated Market Area (DMA) inputs. No data team required.

2. Voice-enabled Prompts: Users can speak to Lou and watch the data come to life. Ask about "the two weeks after our Super Bowl campaign" or "how does Gen Z feel about our brand today versus six months ago?" Lou pulls the data, builds the views, and surfaces the insight.

3. Funnel and Competitive Diagnosis: Lou does not only show what changed about your brand. It helps teams identify where the funnel is breaking and how the brand compares competitively, pointing to where the issue lies and where to look first.

4. Customized Reports: Live data is pulled from the brand's actual performance at that moment, each savable to a permanent URL, ready for the next session or the next team member to easily view.

5. Time-over-Time Comparisons in Seconds: No manual date configuration required.

6. Boardroom-ready Outputs: Lou pulls trusted, rigorously grounded data from HarrisQuest, formatted for the C-suite brief or the analyst deep-dive, on demand.

When the data does not support a conclusion, Lou says so. Every output is grounded in the platform's methodology, metric definitions, formulas, and reasoning rules. No hallucinated calculations. No scraping. No invented causality from cross-sectional data.

"I needed year-over-year Brand Equity across the U.S. and Mexico. That's normally a team effort. With Lou, I built it myself in minutes," said a Brand Marketing Manager at a major international sports federation. "It's not a tool we check in on. It's an analyst that's already working."

A Differentiated Experience: AI Inside the Measurement System

HarrisQuest stores the work teams already do: segments, saved views, historical cuts, and prior analyses, each preserved at a permanent URL. Lou operates inside that accumulated history. A new analyst stepping into the platform on day one has immediate access to an AI working from the team's saved segments, views, and prior work. No briefing. No setup. No starting over. The longer a team uses HarrisQuest, the richer the platform context Lou can work from.

Brand Intelligence for Every Member of the Team

Lou extends the power of always-on brand intelligence to every brand insights professional, marketer, communications leader, and executive who makes decisions on brand and corporate reputation data. Users no longer need to be data specialists to dig into what is driving brand performance. Lou handles the analysis; they focus on the decision.

Users can now speak to Lou, ask what's going on with their brand, drill into audience performance with Gen Z, sports fans in Mexico, or any segment that matters, and get insights on what is causing shifts in brand equity or consideration. Lou will surface what you need in time for the next meeting and save what the team worked on for next time.

Visit harrisquest.com to learn more.

About HarrisQuest

HarrisQuest is The Harris Poll's brand intelligence platform, built by researchers for researchers and available as part of Stagwell's The Marketing Cloud. It enables global brands to track brand and corporate reputation consistently across 24 markets, measuring equity, awareness, trust, and consideration with the rigor of 70 years of Harris Poll methodology. Harris, its native AI analyst, turns those measurements into analysis teams can generate, save, and revisit within the platform in seconds.

About The Harris Poll

The Harris Poll is one of the longest-running and most respected surveys in American history, tracking public opinion, corporate reputation, and brand health since 1956. As part of Stagwell, The Harris Poll delivers research, analytics, and measurement solutions to some of the world's leading brands.

About The Marketing Cloud

The Marketing Cloud (formerly Stagwell Marketing Cloud) is a data-driven suite of AI-powered SaaS and service solutions built for the modern marketer. Powered by proprietary data and advanced tools spanning research, communications, creative, and media, it enables organizations to achieve measurable business outcomes by making smarter decisions, faster. The Marketing Cloud was born out of Stagwell's (NASDAQ:STGW) award-winning network, known for delivering creative performance for ambitious brands.

About Stagwell

Stagwell is the global challenger network transforming marketing through AI. We deliver scaled creative performance for the world's most ambitious brands, connecting culture-moving creativity with leading-edge technology to harmonize the art and science of marketing. Led by entrepreneurs, our specialists in 45+ countries are unified under a single purpose: to drive effectiveness and improve business results for our clients. Join us at www.stagwellglobal.com.

Media Contact

Alyssa Bourne-Peters, PR Director, North America
[email protected]
+1 917-592-9795

SOURCE: Stagwell

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