TORONTO--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Sep 30, 2026--
Messagepoint today announced that MARCIE Assist ™, its purpose-built agentic AI capability for customer communications management (CCM), has been named a winner in the 2026 Stratus Awards for Cloud Computing in the Agentic AI/Autonomous Cloud Operations category. Presented by the Business Intelligence Group, the awards recognize companies, products and individuals delivering differentiated cloud offerings.
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MARCIE Assist is the first agentic AI capability built to automate the work of CCM. Integrated into the Messagepoint Communications Cloud, it enables users to describe what they need to do in natural language and have AI interpret the request, seek clarification when needed, develop a plan for approval and automate the execution of supported actions across content, rules, data and templates. Early testing has shown a reduction of more than 70% in the overall effort users spend managing communications and an acceleration of change cycles by up to 10X.
MARCIE Assist combines agentic planning with deterministic execution. Plans are presented for approval before supported actions are executed through Messagepoint's deterministic engine. Actions are restricted to align with the user's existing roles and permissions. All prompts, responses and actions are recorded in an audit trail, and changes can be reversed. Personally identifiable information (PII) used in customer communications is managed in a separate production processing environment to ensure that it is never accessed by AI. In addition, content and other information are not used to train models.
"We believe the value of agentic AI lies in its ability to safely complete meaningful work faster under strict enterprise controls," said Steve Biancaniello, CEO of Messagepoint. "MARCIE Assist gives business users a simpler, far more efficient way to manage complex, regulated communications while preserving permissions, approvals, auditability and rollback. This recognition validates the purpose-built approach we have taken to agentic AI for CCM."
Messagepoint introduced AI-powered Content Intelligence in 2018 to help organizations understand, optimize and migrate complex communications content. MARCIE Assist builds on that foundation, extending AI across the work of creating, updating, managing and governing customer communications. Its natural-language interface makes sophisticated CCM capabilities accessible to business users without requiring coding or prompting expertise.
The Messagepoint Communications Cloud supports the complete customer communications lifecycle, including onboarding, content management, composition, production management, orchestration, digital delivery, and quality assurance. Its cloud-based, AI-powered, API-centric architecture enables organizations to centrally manage governed content and deliver consistent, personalized batch, on-demand and ad hoc communications across print and digital channels.
The Stratus Awards celebrate the organizations and individuals defining the next phase of cloud computing, where success is measured by what a system delivers rather than where it happens to run. Winners are selected based on how effectively they are advancing cloud innovation, delivering measurable value, and moving their industries forward.
To learn more about MARCIE Assist, visit www.messagepoint.com/MARCIEAssist.
About Messagepoint
Messagepoint is a leading provider of AI-powered customer communications management software that transforms how complex customer communications are created, managed, and delivered. An award-winning innovator in the CCM market, Messagepoint has pioneered solutions that empower business users to manage highly personalized, regulated communications with greater speed, accuracy, and control. Today, Messagepoint leverages advanced AI, including agentic AI, to simplify the migration, optimization, authoring, management, and orchestration of communications across all channels. Organizations rely on Messagepoint to deliver exceptional customer experiences with greater efficiency, confidence, and compliance. For more information, visit www.messagepoint.com.
About the Stratus Awards
The Stratus Awards for Cloud Computing honor the companies, products, and individuals innovating in the cloud and delivering offerings that are truly differentiated in the market. Since 2014, the program has recognized organizations that add measurable value through cloud-based solutions, from infrastructure and platform services to security, edge computing, and the AI systems now running on top of them. Every nomination is reviewed against objective scoring benchmarks by a panel of experienced business professionals, identifying the work that is genuinely pushing the boundaries of the cloud.
About Business Intelligence Group
Business Intelligence Group (BIG) is an independent awards organization that has been recognizing outstanding achievement in business since 2012. Now in its 14th awards season, BIG operates 12 annual programs spanning innovation, artificial intelligence, cybersecurity, customer service, cloud computing, sustainability, sales and marketing, workplace culture, and women's leadership. Business award programs include the BIG Innovation Awards, AI Excellence Awards, Fortress Cyber Security Awards, Excellence in Customer Service Awards, Stratus Awards for Cloud Computing, Sustainability Awards, SAMMY Awards for Sales and Marketing, Best Places to Work Awards, Herizon Awards, We Love Tech Awards, NAA Top Employers Award, and BIG Awards for Business.
Unlike popularity contests, BIG programs use professional judging panels and objective scoring benchmarks to identify organizations, products, and individuals making real, measurable impact. Winners receive a complete promotional toolkit, including blockchain-verified credentials, press release support, social media assets, and featured placement across BIG's global community of more than one million business professionals.
For more information about BIG award programs, nomination deadlines, and judging criteria, visit bintelligence.com.
Messagepoint's MARCIEAssist, agentic AI for automating the work of customer communications management, was recognized with the 2026 Stratus Award
JUIZ DE FORA, Brazil (AP) — When helicopter pilot Plínio Vicentin Júnior drives his vintage Pontiac Grand Ville through the streets of Brazil's southeastern state of Minas Gerais, an American flag fluttering near his windshield like a presidential motorcade, onlookers stop and stare.
Júnior, 59, is running for Congress for the first time. But until Oct. 4, he is Plínio Trump, channeling U.S. President Donald Trump with his hairstyle, long orange tie, firm handshake and even his stride.
“(Trump) is likeable, iconic," Plínio Trump told The Associated Press late Monday after campaigning in Juiz de Fora, a city of 570,000 residents 180 kilometers (111 miles) west of Rio de Janeiro. "Few people sneered at me. Most people smile and hug me."
Candidates like Plínio Trump are part of a Brazilian tradition that spans nearly eight decades. Whether called protest candidates or joke candidates, they bring a surreal element to congressional elections. To run, they must belong to one of Brazil's 30 political parties and meet the same eligibility requirements as other candidates, including the country's clean-record rules.
This year, a few hundred of those are among more than 7,800 candidates running for a seat in Congress, with even more running for state legislatures.
Paradoxically, while these entertaining figures can attract voters disillusioned with traditional politics, the ballots cast for them also add to their parties' total under Brazil's electoral system. More votes for joke candidates can translate into more seats in Congress — and more public funds for the very apparatus that protest voters are trying to reject.
Trump is not the only U.S. politician with admirers in Brazil’s congressional race.
Henrique Barack Obama, born Cláudio Henrique dos Anjos, has even loftier ambitions. After previous runs for office in Rio de Janeiro, he is seeking one of the two Senate seats at stake in the Federal District, home to Brazil’s capital, Brasilia. But even those who have seen him up close acknowledge that the 57-year-old bears little resemblance to the former U.S. president.
“It is more about his posture,” said Claudio Santos, 33, who knows the Brazilian Obama from his time in Rio. “He also likes the attention that the name brings, obviously. When he wasn't running for office, he would pose as Obama during Flamengo soccer games.”
Another novelty candidate, Mick Jagger, whose real name is Walcy Calixto Vieira, is again running for a seat in the legislature of the central state of Goias. He is no rock'n'roll frontman, but a 66-year-old carpenter with shaggy hair and brow-skimming bangs.
Other candidates skip celebrity impersonations and opt instead for catchy aliases. “Tsunami Grandmother,” whose real name is Scheile Aparecida Soares Brandão, is seeking a seat in the Minas Gerais state legislature. “Who Who," born Francisco das Chagas Costa Oliveira, is running for the legislature in the northeastern state of Piaui.
“Lonely Boy,” or Marcelo da Rosa, is a truck driver from Parana state seeking a seat in Congress, and then there is Severino Cardoso Sobrinho, better known as Samurai Taxi Driver, a nunchaku master featured in Instagram videos who is running for the state legislature in Pernambuco, the home state of President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.
Brazil's tradition of novelty candidates dates back to 1959, when roughly 100,000 voters in São Paulo wrote the name of Cacareco, a female rhinoceros from the city zoo, on their paper ballots in a city council election. Electoral authorities later invalidated the votes.
Such political stunts disappeared during Brazil’s military dictatorship from 1964 to 1985. But the country's return to national elections in 1989 featured one of its most memorable presidential candidates: Dr. Enéas Carneiro, a respected cardiologist who delivered rapid-fire, complex speeches in 15-second radio and television spots. Many Brazilians found his breathless delivery hilarious.
“My name is Enéas!” he shouted into the camera at the end of every ad. Carneiro pulled in 360,000 votes in Brazil’s first direct presidential election since 1960.
Five years later, with voters still angered with the corruption scandal that led to President Fernando Collor’s impeachment, Carneiro finished third, drawing 4.6 million votes behind Lula and eventual winner Fernando Henrique Cardoso.
The movement reached a new high in 2010, when Tiririca, a circus clown and comedian, won a congressional seat for São Paulo with more than 1.3 million votes. His campaign slogans included, “It can’t get any worse” and, “What does a federal congressman do? I really don’t know. Vote for me and I will find out for you!”
Francisco Everardo Oliveira Silva, nicknamed Tiririca by his mother for looking perpetually angry as a child, served four consecutive terms. He is seeking a fifth, representing his native Ceara state in Brazil’s northeast. In 2022, he secured 70,000 votes to retain his job.
Carlos Melo, a political science professor at Insper university in São Paulo, said candidates like Tiririca punch above their weight because of Brazil’s proportional representation system. Votes for candidates go to their party and are then distributed proportionally.
“Some of these candidates have enough votes to win their own seats, but others just add 1,000 or 2,000 votes to their parties. They don’t get seats, but they help their parties secure a bigger slice of Congress and public funds,” Melo said. “Nowadays, we see many more of these bizarre candidates because traditional political leadership is decomposing. People who would normally fill these roles are opting out of institutional politics.”
As Plínio Trump wrapped up campaigning in Juiz de Fora and prepared to return to Varginha — a city 400 kilometers (248 miles) west of Rio de Janeiro nationally famous for its alleged UFO landing site — he acknowledged that his decision to campaign as the U.S. president goes beyond physical resemblance.
“We have few options on the right in Brazil,” he said. “For me, Trump is a right-wing reference.”
Savarese reported from São Paulo.
Follow AP’s coverage of Latin America and the Caribbean at https://apnews.com/hub/latin-america
Plinio Vicentin Jr., who is running for federal lawmaker as "Plinio Trump," with the Novo Party representing Minas Gerais state, campaigns from his car ahead of the general election in Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais state, Brazil, Monday, Sept. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)
Plinio Vicentin Jr., who is running for federal lawmaker as "Plinio Trump," with the Novo Party representing Minas Gerais state, poses for a photo a he campaigns ahead of the general election in Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais state, Brazil, Monday, Sept. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)
Plinio Vicentin Jr., center, who is running for federal lawmaker as "Plinio Trump," with the Novo Party representing Minas Gerais state, campaigns ahead of the general election in Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais state, Brazil, Monday, Sept. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)
Plinio Vicentin Jr., who is running for federal lawmaker as "Plinio Trump," with the Novo Party representing Minas Gerais state, poses for a portrait as he campaigns ahead of the general election in Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais state, Brazil, Monday, Sept. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)
Plinio Vicentin Jr., who is running for federal lawmaker as "Plinio Trump," with the Novo Party representing Minas Gerais state, campaigns from his car ahead of the general election in Juiz de Fora, Minas Gerais state, Brazil, Monday, Sept. 28, 2026. (AP Photo/Silvia Izquierdo)
