Dentsu Acquires Firstborn

By Kiran Aditham 

Kunur over at AdAge broke the news that Dentsu acquired New York digital shop, Firstborn, so we rang up the latter’s CEO Michael Ferdman to get his take on the deal. He says:

“We have a great thing going here. There’s always something like, why mess something up that’s not broken? But this was truly the only suitor that made sense. We are truly getting a chance just to do what we do, continue it but do it potentially on a bigger stage. That’s enormous. I’ve heard every pitch you could possibly imagine. Not to pat ourselves on the back, but we’ve been approached by a ton of suitors and I always walked away thinking, will somebody truly understand our value and make an offer that can work now and going forward? I never felt there was an offer where there was something different. I was interesting in something that helped us make the next step, not just cashing out, etc.

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[Dentsu West CEO] Tim Andree just really understood us and took the time and made us an offer we really couldn’t refuse. I’m not Robin Hood and money is certainly an issue, but there are many things that are important. The people at Firstborn loving being here for a reason. There are high expectations and high reward, and today there was high reward.”

In the next day or so, we’ll hopefully be getting more perspective on the acquisition from FB president Dan LaCivita and CD Joon Park, who will remain onboard along with Ferdman.

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