More than a year ago, we let you know about Publicis Groupe’s plans to acquire Atlanta-based Moxie Interactive and merge it with Columbus, Ohio’s Engauge. It only took about six months for the union of the two shops under the Moxie umbrella to become official.
Now we hear that the staffing cuts directly related to that merger, preceded by tips about a “restructuring” in late July, took place yesterday. We’ve yet to receive a response from the agency, but these are the details provided by tipsters:
- The cuts affected 10 percent of Moxie’s total workforce
- Total firings include up to 47 employees
- Most of those who lost their jobs were former members of the Engauge team
No details on where these cuts occurred, though the July tips indicated that some managers would be leaving and even the moderately positive posts on the agency’s Glassdoor page do seem take some issue with “management structure.”
Another tipster contacted us the day after this post first ran, claiming that the layoffs did indeed focus mostly on former Engauge employees including the agency’s entire research staff and ECD Tony Sharpe. The tipster also claims that Engauge CEO/Moxie Chairman Nick Bandy also left the agency “a few weeks ago.”
In unrelated news, something seems a little…off about the Twitter profile linked from Moxie’s homepage.
UPDATE: someone fixed the link after we posted — but the screenshot remains.