Accenture is planning to buy Droga5 adding a tinge of creativity to its consultancy.
Accenture’s deeper push into advertising reflects the ad industry’s rapidly changing competitive landscape.
The deal will see all of Droga5’s 500 employees across offices in New York and London become a major creative cog in Accenture Interactive’s massive $8.5 billion digital customer experience and marketing services machine.
“We have bits and pieces of brand creative here in North America, but we didn’t have the best,” says Accenture Interactive CEO Brian Whipple. “David [Droga] and his team are the best, hands down, and now we’ll be adding that, which will just make our ability to make best-in-class experiences for clients–and communicate them to consumers–an incredible reality.”
“From our perspective, this is what a consultancy has to do,” says Forrester analyst Jay Pattisall. “You either have to double down and really aggressively pursue these creative capabilities to really help your clients distinguish themselves in the marketplace, or you have to get out.”
In that spirit, advertising agencies and their holding company overlords have spent the last few years searching for the best (read: most profitable) ways to navigate an increasingly volatile landscape in which major marketers want effective work that is always faster, better, and cheaper.
Last fall, WPP merged multiple agency brands into new entities–Wunderman Thompson and VMLY&R, respectively. bringing together the capabilities of both digital and programmatic advertising.
The company’s marketing arm has grown significantly in recent years as broader shifts in consumer behavior have reordered what advertising truly encompasses. In the past, it was about coming up with attention-grabbing ads. Now, it is also about providing broader consumer experiences.
That has made the fight for marketing dollars that much more fierce, with traditional ad agencies jostling with Silicon Valley firms, consultants and upstarts for business.
“We’re working with clients to reinvent how consumers buy their particular products and services,” said Whipple.
sources: http://www.nytimes.com
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