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Dutch marketing and communications group Candid has acquired U.K. independent agency Creature for an undisclosed sum, with an aim to expand the shop internationally.
Following the deal, Creature will be the lead creative agency in Candid’s network. One of Candid’s Dutch agencies, XXS, will rebrand as Creature Amsterdam and become Creature’s first international office.
Creature co-founder and chief executive Dan Cullen-Shute will become worldwide CEO overseeing both offices, while XXS founder and director Piet Hein Smit and managing director Sanne Tolsma will continue in those roles at Creature Amsterdam.
Creature’s current management team—chief creative officers and co-founders Ben Middleton and Stu Outhwaite-Noel, chief strategy officer Andrew Gibson, chief client officer Hanisha Kotecha and finance director Sian Welsh—will maintain their respective roles at Creature London.
While Creature will continue to grow in London, the deal with Candid will enable it to expand globally, Cullen-Shute said. After the Netherlands, the agency will look to branch out into other markets such as the U.S.
“Candid gives us the opportunity to stand on a bigger stage and take that to more markets,” Cullen-Shute explained.
Creature has 50 employees in London and reported turnover of about $12 million (9.8 million pounds) last year, with clients including retailer Dunelm, greeting card and gift company Moonpig, fintech business ClearScore, digital bank Atom Bank and mattress maker Eve Sleep.
XXS has fewer than 30 employees in Amsterdam and would not disclose its financials.
Maintaining independence
Creature launched in the U.K. in 2011 as an offshoot of the agency Creature Seattle, which held a stake in the London office until 2013 and closed after filing for bankruptcy in 2016.
Under the deal with Candid, Creature will operate as an autonomous agency within the group.
Creature’s founders were approached by Candid towards the end of last year but claimed they weren’t looking to sell at the time. With this deal, they said their plan is different from the typical trajectory of agency acquisitions, whereby the founders might wait for the end of their earn-out period before cashing out and leaving, while the agency brand would eventually be dissolved or subsumed by its new owner.
“We wanted [a deal] that would make the brand feel bigger, let us maintain a sense of ownership and direction rather than getting swallowed up by something, and felt like the beginning of something rather than the end,” Cullen-Shute said.
“We don’t do earnouts at Candid,” added Candid Group CEO Rudiger Wanck. “The agencies that have joined [Candid] are entrepreneurial in their own right and want to continue to be so. We don’t want agencies that are looking for a sell-out, but rather those that want to continue to grow, with the [Candid] platform in the background to support that. We’re enabling agencies to scale themselves further both locally and internationally.”
Candid’s aims
This is Candid’s third acquisition of a U.K. agency in the past six months, following its purchases of consultancy Brand Potential and digital shop Positive—and “more will follow soon,” according to Wanck.
Candid is privately owned and has acquired 11 agencies in the Netherlands beyond its three in the U.K. After the U.K., it will look to expand into other markets as well.
The company describes itself as a “platform,” which it defines as a structure in which agencies with different specialities are supported by Candid’s network but operate independently. Every agency owned by Candid shares the same technology, data storage and backend tools, “enabling a faster way of working together while retaining their individuality,” Wanck explained.
“If you look at the current [marketing and communications] market, there tend to be two flavors: large holding groups or the mono brands, where all agencies acquired are brought together under a single umbrella and brand. We see an opportunity to sit in the middle with the platform approach—bringing together agencies with completely different skill sets while keeping them fully independent,” Wanck continued.
“We want our platform to revolve around entrepreneurialism, and we firmly believe agencies should continue to be entrepreneurial and develop on their own. They should maintain their key success factors—not just the founders, clients and brand name, but the whole culture that is built into the agency. It’s important to keep that integrity in place.”
