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Advertising Consolidated Mergers and Acquisitions

Dentsu folds Vizeum into iProspect

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By John Glenday, Reporter

January 14, 2021 | 3 min read

Tokyo based ad giant Dentsu will fold media agency Vizeum within performance marketing specialists iProspect to forge a “future-focused, end-to-end global media agency”.

Dentsu

Dentsu is merging Vizeum into iProspect

The integration will use Vizeum’s media strategy and planning, storytelling, and brand-building capabilities with iProspect’s digital expertise, audience knowledge, and performance mindset to provide clients with access to the best of both worlds.

What does it mean?

  • A newly enlarged iProspect will draw on Dentsu's full firepower to furnish clients with specialised teams able to draw upon the full resources of the Japanese powerhouse.

  • The client offer will be further bolstered by access to new audience insights, integrated strategies and enhanced planning & activation to steal a march on their rivals.

  • With fresh blood and skills comes new leadership in the form of global president Amanda Morrissey, who will shoulder responsibility for 8,000 media and performance specialists operating in 93 markets under the iProspect banner.

  • Picking up the ropes just one-year after arriving at Dentsu from Unlimited Morrissey boats an impressive track record as chief executive of Publicis Media for 18 months to 2017 and as UK client services director, subsequently general manager, for WPP's AKQA from 2011 to 2015.

  • Stating the importance of the tie-up in her own words, Morrissey said: “iProspect is designed for clients at the intersection of brand and performance. We believe brand drives performance, and performance drives brand. We no longer exist in an ecosystem where these elements can be planned and bought separately.“

  • Morrissey concludes: “By focusing on how consumers behave in their digital world and applying that to real-world scenarios via a highly connected and creative use of all channels, we position our clients to combine the learnings from the short and long term to drive more effective business growth today and tomorrow."

  • As part of the marriage, both agencies will share responsibility for clients including Ikea, Sonos and Shiseido.

Why it matters

  • The latest agency ingestion marks a period of ongoing consolidation for Dentsu which is engaged in a global restructuring which will see operations routed through six primary brands.

  • That process spells the end for Vizeum as a separate entity and serves as a further break with Jerry Buhlmann and the Aegis legacy at Dentsu, which had lingered on as a second global media network within Dentsu Aegis Network (now Dentsu International) following its 2011 acquisition.

Advertising Consolidated Mergers and Acquisitions

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Dentsu

Dentsu Inc. is a Japanese international advertising and public relations joint stock company headquartered in Tokyo. Dentsu is currently the largest advertising...

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