by Herman Manson (@marklives) Publicis Groupe has just announced several acquisitions in emerging markets in Latin America and Africa. Locally, it has acquired South African below-the-line digital agency, Prima Integrated Marketing (Prima), which was founded in 1994 and employs 50 people. Clients include Adidas, BMW, MINI and Virgin Active.
The agency will be rebranded as Prima Arc and will become part of the Publicis Africa Group network. Managing director, Peter Farrel, retains his position.
Stake in AG Partners
Publicis Groupe also announced it has taken a stake in AG Partners, a pan-African network of 14 communications agencies across 13 countries, including Benin, Burkina Faso, Cameroon, Central African Republic, Chad, Congo, Democratic Republic of Congo, France, Gabon, Mali, Niger, Senegal and Togo. Each of these entities will work directly with the multi-door Publicis Worldwide operation in Africa.
In Mexico, Publicis Groupe has acquired digital agency Lead2Action — to be integrated into Publicis Mexico.
Actively acquiring
Both WPP and Publicis have been actively acquiring agency properties in the country over the past several months, with more deals in the pipeline. WPP just relaunched Grey into South Africa by buying out and rebranding Volcano. WPP also recently bought into Cerebra and Native; Publicis Groupe recently bought out OwenKessel and merged it with Leo Burnett, as well as digital agency Lighthouse Digital, which has become part of Publicis division Starcom MediaVest Group. In December 2013, Publicis also bought out digital agency Synergize to sit within Saatchi & Saatchi South Africa.
— MarkLives’ round-up of top ad and media industry news and opinion in your mailbox every three work days. Sign up here!