Dive Brief:
- WPP digital agency Wunderman acquired a majority stake in Pierry, a Salesforce Marketing Cloud-focused consultancy. The move both expands Wunderman’s technology consulting expertise in the U.S. and strengthens its global relations with Salesforce, according to a Wunderman press release.
- Pierry was founded in 2008 and has nearly 100 employees in the U.S. and Japan including strategy, creative, technology and digital specialists. It’s a Salesforce partner that helps clients' digital marketing efforts with its proprietary MaaS — marketing as a service — approach, per the press release, and has clients including LifeLock, Louisiana State University and Major League Soccer team San Jose Earthquakes.
- The advertising and marketing giant did not disclose the size of the stake or how much it paid for it. However, it said the investment is focused particularly on improving its tech, data and content.
Dive Insight:
Wunderman’s new majority stake is a move that could help both companies. Pierry could scale more quickly and boost its service capabilities, according to founder and CEO Josh Pierry, and Wunderman could likely get a tighter integration with Salesforce along with enhanced technology expertise.
The traditional agency model is shifting on multiple fronts, but one potential threat is global consultancies opening digital divisions, such as Accenture Interactive, that compete directly with agencies for advertising and marketing services, which could be a primary motivation for Wunderman's latest move. The primary way consultancies have been ramping up skill sets across different functions — from creative to media buying to data management — has been through acquisitions. Wunderman is taking a page from that playbook in its latest investment, not only adding to its assets but also bringing in digital consulting expertise.
Among the new consultancy players in the digital advertising and marketing space, Accenture has been significantly active on the acquisition front, making well over a dozen deals in the last five years with several happening this year. Its acquisition strategy goes beyond agency-related advertising and marketing industry firms to include deeper level tech firms.
If consultancies are looking to corner the entire chain in digital marketing, agencies like Wunderman might consider following suit and developing closer relationships to martech firms like Salesforce.