Dive Brief:

• WPP has acquired digital transformation agency Fenom Digital, which will become a part of Wunderman Thompson’s e-commerce offerings, the company said in a press release. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
• The three-year-old Fenom Digital provides enterprise, commerce, order management systems, supply chain, marketing and customer experience solutions for brands and retailers across North America, including Casper, Crocs, David Yurman and GNC, among others.
• In 2022, Fenom Digital was named Salesforce’s “Best Up and Coming Partner,” among its Commerce Cloud Partners of the Year. 

Dive Insight:

WPP’s Fenom Digital acquisition follows a pattern of agency holding companies focusing on growing their e-commerce capabilities. Last year, IPG acquired RafterOne as a way to offer end-to-end commerce solutions that cover an array of functions like analytics, marketing and customer experience management. Key to the IPG acquisition was RafterOne’s close relationship with Salesforce. 

While not stated explicitly, Fenom’s Salesforce expertise and relationships could help Wunderman Thompson expand its business offerings and comes at a time when customer data is at a premium as privacy concerns force digital platforms like Google, Apple and others to tighten controls on user data. 

“We have been highly impressed at the sales growth [Fenom has] achieved for their clients,” said Neil Stewart, CEO of Wunderman Thompson Commerce & Technology, in a release. “Their expertise complements and strengthens the world-class Salesforce capability that we already have in North America. We are looking forward to bringing our combined expertise to service clients across multiple Salesforce clouds.”

Agencies and holding companies have targeted e-commerce expertise and consulting as potential growth areas. According to Euromonitor, online retail is expected to grow from $3.3 trillion in sales today to $5.4 trillion by 2026. As a result, the major holding companies have been investing in providing logistics, product delivery data and other services so that they can have more understanding and input into the business operations. 

Salesforce is one of the leaders of cloud-based CRM solutions, which means agencies need to understand the platform’s nuances in order to meaningfully contribute to their clients’ businesses. However, Salesforce as a company has struggled as the economy has slowed and companies take a closer look at their SaaS spend. Last week, the company announced it would lay off about 10% of its workforce, with many of those cuts coming from its Tableau data analytics division, the latest piece of evidence that the digital space is taking a big hit during the current economic uncertainty.