Omnicom said Thursday it had acquired Credera, a small management and technology consulting firm with offices in Denver, Dallas and Houston.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Credera works with Fortune 500 companies including Southwest Airlines, Chili’s and The Container Store to build consumer tech platforms, integrate mar tech systems and consult on organizing and managing staff who work on those tools.
“About 80% of the work that we do is in the customer-facing digital space,” said Justin Bell, Credera’s president. “It’s really helping CMOs better reach their customers.”
Credera and its 300 employees will work inside Omnicom Precision Marketing Group (OPMG), the data and CRM group Omnicom launched in September, headed by former Digitas CEO Luke Taylor. OPMG works with clients and agencies across Omnicom to infuse data and personalization into creative and media through its Omni platform, launched in July.
Credera gives OPMG a services layer on top of its data chops, Taylor said.
The acquisition “allows us to own that tip-of-the-spear conversation with clients and hand-hold them through all the complex issues they face as they look to modernize and future-proof their marketing organization,” he said. “These are areas where we had some skills, but this significantly builds those skills so we can access them across Omnicom clients.”
Omnicom looked at “hundreds and hundreds” of other consulting firms, Taylor said, and landed on Credera because of strong testimonials from its clients.
Credera will live inside OPMG, but the unit’s relationship with agencies across the group will expose its consulting expertise to all Omnicom clients. Credera will keep its name to stay in line with Omnicom’s strategy of supporting agency cultures while breaking down silos and driving collaboration across the group.
“Credera is unique in terms of attrition, retention and client satisfaction, and we don’t want to mess with that,” Taylor said. “We’ll look at how we package go-to-market propositions where we can go to clients with a clearly defined process, methodology and tools.”
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For Omnicom, acquiring Credera is “not a strategic pivot in any way,” Taylor said. It’s an opportunity to bolster increasingly essential services around marketing transformation. He noted that the acquisition is not like Publicis’ 2014 acquisition of Sapient, which was more of a strategic pivot for a legacy business during a difficult time.
“We’re not looking to go head to head with Accenture or anyone like that,” Taylor said. “Everyone looked at those large-scale IT opportunities, but our conviction is to be the best within the marketing sphere. We are not looking to go into the generalist business transformation space.”
