Salesforce partner and digital marketing agency Pierry is integrating within WPP’s Wunderman Thompson.
The San Francisco-based agency, which was acquired by WPP in 2017, will rebrand as part of Wunderman Thompson while continuing to operate out of its current office.
“The strategy of connecting our communications to the right audiences—and the audience of Salesforce—is critical,” Wunderman Thompson’s North American CEO Shane Atchison told Adweek. “The integration has been going on since we bought them. That will continue,” he added, noting that the move is part of the broader strategy of integrating properties under the “master brand” of Wunderman Thompson.
Last November, Business Insider reported that Wunderman Thompson was absorbing Possible, Mirum and iStrategyLabs.
Atchison confirmed that the Possible and iStrategyLabs brands were integrated into Wunderman Thompson in North America, while adding, “There will be exceptions for client conflicts and other scenarios globally.”
For Mirum, which closed its Los Angeles office last month, Atchison pointed out that because of overlapping geographical locations, it made sense to shift those teams to operating within Wunderman Thompson offices.
“We just needed to join ourselves up and make it simple for clients to navigate with us,” Wunderman Thompson global CEO Mel Edwards told Adweek, explaining that in the U.K., Wunderman Thompson merged the Mirum and Possible brands under the Mirum name.
Leadership looked at a number of factors to determine when to maintain individual agency brands, including the strength of the brand and company in key markets, which global clients are connected, and the strengths of the brand in that capability.
The Pierry integration also follows Wunderman Thompson acquiring marketing technology consultancy XumaK last week, in a move designed to bolster its experience technology offering and reinforce Wunderman Thompson’s partnership with Adobe to provide customer experience services.
Atchison cited customer experience as an area where the agency has seen significant growth within North America, adding that “building programs for universal accessibility of all customer experiences” is expected to be an area of continual growth in the future.
“When we’re seeing signs of growth, we’re really doubling down on those areas,” Edwards explained, citing Wunderman Thompson Consulting, born partly out of Wunderman’s acquisition of digital transformation agency The Cocktail, as another example.
A little over a year since WPP merged advertising’s oldest agency, J. Walter Thompson, with digital shop Wunderman, and the dust may finally be starting to settle.
Edwards stressed that she didn’t think there would be further major shifts of agency brands in 2020, adding that Wunderman Thompson had “done the majority of integrations in that sense.”
“We’re all super excited about this year,” Edwards said. “Last year was hectic. … I don’t think any of us knew how many plates we had to spin. We have the platform and foundation now for building a great agency and helping our people strive in their careers.”
“We’re fresh and we have fresh legs, we have fresh energy, we have fresh talent. In 2020, we have the team now,” Atchison added. “So it’s about executing against our strategy and acting as one with our clients and acting as one with our partners and acting as one company.”
