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DA Group and Rhetorical form partnership for visual and audio brilliance online

June 2003

DA Group and Rhetorical Systems, two of Scotland's leading technology companies will tomorrow formalise a new strategic partnership at get real:get virtual, DA's avatar showcase and product launch (bfi London IMAX(R) cinema, 18 June 2003).

DA, a pioneer of virtual agents across PC, web, kiosk and mobile phone and text-to-speech specialist Rhetorical have agreed a deal to integrate and promote each others' technology, bringing together the latest in visual, animation and audio techniques for online and virtual brands.

DA, known globally for its virtual characters, has developed a real-time animation engine, which is being made widely available for the first time. Rhetorical is a world leader in speech synthesis, capable of creating computer voices with natural style and intonation, even regional accents.

The partnership between the two companies follows their successful collaboration for Jim Beam Brands, which produced the colourful and loud-mouthed Eduardo J Pussai. Eduardo's looks and distinctive Latino voice were designed to reflect JBB's Aftershock brand and he now delivers and reads emails from the ShockingTimes website, fully animated.

The move also reflects the aims of both companies to capitalise on the potential that exists for creating personalised and effective online brands. Eduardo will be the focus of a keynote presentation to an audience of marketing and brand managers as well as technology developers at tomorrow's get real:get virtual.

Mike Antliff, CEO of DA Group says: Our two companies have been coming together for some time. We first collaborated on Seonaid for the Scottish Executive and more recently on Eduardo. We've worked hard to integrate the two technologies and I believe that together we offer a very powerful proposition to brand managers looking for something different online. Rhetorical's ability to create distinctive accents and dialect through text-to-speech technology compliments the personalisation we can achieve with our characters and real-time animation tools.

Marc Moens, CEO of Rhetorical says: Natural, accented, voice synthesis has a very real role to play in online branding. This partnership with DA Group puts our technology at the heart of brand development. There are few companies with the reputation or status of DA for virtual characters and we are delighted to have our relationship formalised in such a way that can create a new force for visual and audio presentation online.

For a full press release please visit: www.rhetorical.com/press/pressrelease030617.html

For further information:

Ruth Smith
Rhetorical Systems
Tel: +00 131 525 6845
Email: ruth@rhetorical.com

Pentech Ventures
David Armour
Tel: +44 (0)141 572 7303
Email: david@pentechvc.com