Advantage Solutions, a holding group that serves global brands and is known for its work in the retail space, has launched a new ecommerce agency called Advantage Unified Commerce (AUC).
To form the new agency, Advantage Solutions consolidated five agencies specializing in ecommerce solutions.
AUC, now 500-employees-large, offers clients a holistic solution to ecommerce and it is primed to deliver a full omnichannel experience, from brick-and-mortar to digital. The five agencies that came together to form AUC include the Amazon specialty agencies Beekeeper Marketing and eShopportunity, the ecommerce solution provider Sage Tree and shopper agencies IN Connected and Edge Agency.
The new agency offers in-store and digital media, multichannel activation, attribution and analytics—and access to AUC’s creative teams and proprietary technology platform. Data underpins the offering, which AUC gleans from mobile app integrations, store-level data gathered by in-store merchandisers, and SKU-level data from third parties.
Victor Lee sits at the helm of the new agency. Most recently, Lee served as chief marketing officer for Kin Insurance. Lee’s previous brand-side experience includes leadership roles at RX Bar and at Hasbro. Before that, he held senior roles at Publicis Groupe’s Digitas.
Advantage Solutions decided to double down on an integrated ecommerce offering after the 2020 ecommerce and digital media surge that happened in the wake of Covid-19. At the time, the parent company realized industry offerings were siloed—often forcing clients to engage with numerous specialist agencies depending on their needs. Suddenly, the retail environment required holistic solutions to help brands become truly omnichannel.
“The notion was combine them all, consolidate and combine them all to offer a macro service offering—an offering that solves anything any brand needs in the commerce space,” Lee told Adweek.
Lee saw consolidation within Publicis’ network after it acquired Digitas. “It fed a lot into how I look at organizational structure,” he said, noting that his experience on the brand side also informed his approach and aim to simplify the agency-client relationship.