Ex-Google chiefs open UK data firm

French data agency Fifty-five – set up by five former Google executives – is expanding into the UK market, with former Razorfish chief Rob Fenton leading the team as managing director.
Founded in 2010 by former Google executives Nicolas Beauchesne, Alan Boydell, Mats Carduner, Arnaud Massonnie and Jean Neltner, Fifty-five’s clients include JD Sports, AXA, Lacoste, Ferrero, HP and Disneyland Paris.
It is already working with a dozen brands in the UK, including L’Oreal and Renault and advises on and manages marketers’ media budgets totalling €300m.
Originally founded to help companies improve customer conversion rates across the burgeoning number of digital platforms, the agency has expanded its offering to help brands find new customers, optimise engagement and boost loyalty by collecting, analysing and acting on their marketing data across all online and offline channels.
Fifty-five’s offering includes advanced web and media analytics, segmentation, A/B testing, multi-source reporting, privacy compliance, data-driven media-buying and attribution.
Fenton (pictured) began his career in 2000 at Bartle Bogle Hegarty as an account planner. In 2002, he joined Razorfish as strategy director before having a spell at Tesco, where he was ecommerce marketing manager, responsible for site content. He was also a member of Tesco Direct launch team, and led the redesign of Tesco Wines and launch of Talking Tesco.
Fenton rejoined Razorfish in 2007 as strategy director, and become a managing partner in 2011. He was promoted to retail director for Europe before joining Fifty-five in November last year.
He claims Fifty-five represents a new kind of agency, focused on making the most of all marketing data but driven by expert people: “Marketers know they can do more with their data to improve how they target and address customers across channels – but many find the new science hard to adopt, while traditional vendors like media agencies, CRM agencies and ad platforms are only experienced in the limited data sets that relate to their part of the customer journey.
“We operate with data across the whole lifecycle and from every touchpoint, no other single company can provide the same integrated offer,” he claimed.
The UK expansion comes as the Paris-based business celebrates its fifth birthday, and coincides with the launch of an office in Hong Kong to meet client demand for their services throughout Asia.
Fifty-five chief executive and co-founder Mats Carduner, who was previously Google’s Southern Europe managing director, said: “One of the most important learnings from our experiences at Google is that the quality of the people hired is the most significant factor in building a successful company. We receive around 800 applications every month and more than half of our employees come from Tier 1 Business and Engineering Schools from the world over.”