Dentsu-owned data-driven marketing agency Merkle is consolidating its B2B division by merging Gyro and Merkle DWA, ditching both brands and renaming them Merkle B2B.
The agencies have been working side by side since the launch of Merkle B2B in September 2020, when the group said each business would retain their own identities and clients; at the time the combined operation brought in $16bn (£11.9bn) in global billings.
Merkle claims the business has grown by 25% in the past 18 months and insists the official merger is a “significant step towards a more innovative and indispensable full-service growth partner for the world’s leading B2B brands”.
Gyro was launched in 1991 by Gary Brine, with Hewlett-Packard as its founding client. He left the business in 2008 to ‘try something different’, shortly after it secured a $120m (£50m) cash injection. However, he remained a shareholder in the company. Merkle bought the business in 2016 for an undisclosed sum.
Meanwhile Merkle DWA was launched in 1996 as David Wood & Associates; it was acquired by Merkle in 2017, again for an undisclosed sum, and specialises in programmatic, search, social, and demand generation. Its clients include Sprint, NetApp, Cisco, DXC, Salesforce, Oracle, and Informatica.
Merkle B2B UK chief executive Rob Gold (pictured) said: “After nearly three years of leading our B2B offering in the UK, it is very exciting to see the full integration of Merkle DWA and Gyro expanding our capabilities.
“With this move, we are bringing together our full-service offering to clients to completely transform modern customer experiences, creating personal relationships between B2B brands and people, and putting human relevance back at the centre of brand connections.”
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