WPP, a British advertising group, announced the deal to acquire Obviously, a New York-based social influencer marketing agency, in order to expand its business in this field.
The financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed.
Obviously’s team of almost 100 people will join VMLY&R, a WPP subsidiary with more than 13,000 employees.
Obviously’s tech platform will help WPP service large, complex campaigns for enterprise clients like Google, Ford, Ulta Beauty, and Amazon. Founded in 2014 by Mae Karwowski and Maxime Domain, Obviously has offices in San Francisco and Paris and focuses on regulated industries such as pharma, healthcare, finance, and insurance.
In addition to the acquisition of Obviously, WPP, which reported £14.29 billion revenue in 2022, also recently acquired Goat, an influencer marketing specialist with over 150 employees across three global offices.
Goat specializes in data-led influencer marketing campaigns that aim to improve customer engagement for brands such as Dell, Beiersdorf, Meta, Tesco, Uber, EA, Natura, and Augustinus Bader. Since its founding, Goat has tracked the performance of over 50,000 influencer channels and over 250,000 pieces of content.
Goat will merge with INCA, WPP’s influencer marketing solution, and join GroupM, WPP’s media investment group, to create the first global influencer marketing agency with over 300 employees in more than 30 markets worldwide.
WPP also purchased influencer marketing agency Village Marketing in February 2022 as part of its growth strategy.
