Deal provides Eleven with opportunities to continue growth and expansion
SAN FRANCISCO and TORONTO, Nov. 2, 2018 /PRNewswire/ – Vision7 International (V7) a subsidiary of BlueFocus International (BFI) today announced it has acquired award-winning San Francisco-based creative agency, Eleven. The deal further expands the V7 family of creative, results driven agencies in North America, and it represents the organization’s first major advertising brand in the U.S.
Eleven, which was named to Advertising Age’s “Small Agency of the Year” list in both 2017 and 2018, is an industry leader that has represented some of the most innovative brands in the world including Google, Apple, Virgin America, Lyft, and Dignity Health.
“When we went to San Francisco to visit Eleven we experienced a group that had built the ideal modern agency model—delivering smart creative at the speed, scale, and impact today’s CMO’s require,” said Brett Marchand V7 Chairman and CEO. “Integrating brand innovation, experience design, advertising content, and media activation is what any consumer-centric client should be seeking in today’s era of convergence. We welcome the entire Eleven team to the V7 family and very much look forward to helping each other grow and become even better partners to today’s brands.”
Eleven’s creative work was recently recognized with two wins at Cannes Lions. This included a Gold Lion: Creative Data/Use of Real-Time Data and a Silver Lion: Digital Craft—both for Google Cloud March Madness Live Predictive TV campaign, which was also honoured as the Ad Age Small Agency Campaign of the Year, B2B.
Eleven has a team of approximately 100 people under the guidance of partners: Courtney Buechert, Michele Sileo, Jarett Hausske, Mike McKay, Michael Borosky, Rob Price, and Ken Kula.
Aside from generating industry leading creative work for their clients, part of Eleven’s success comes from the agency’s flat structure and diversified revenue streams, including a balance between Agency of Record (AOR) and project-based relationships. This approach has led to the agency’s most successful year ever in new business wins and 30 percent revenue growth, projected at US$29 million for 2018.
“Today’s CMO’s need help navigating the complex world of experiences, content and conversations that consumers engage with on a daily basis,” said Courtney Buechert, CEO of Eleven. “Eleven has 20 years of experience creating the type of big, elastic creative ideas that blur the lines between product, marketing, content, and experiences—all coalescing around the consumer. We have ambitious goals to help our clients adapt to this ever evolving landscape and have been looking for the right partner to help us achieve that growth. From the similarities in our agency cultures to our shared belief in the importance of creativity, curiosity and intellectual rigor, we have found all of the complementary capabilities we’ve been looking for in V7.”
Campuses will be built in San Francisco and Chicago with Eleven as the creative hub and will include other agency offerings from the Vision7/BFI family. This campus model will allow leadership to build bespoke teams for clients comprised of best of breed talent from the V7 roster of agencies. Eleven’s location in San Francisco will also allow the other V7 agencies to benefit from the agency’s established presence in Northern California, including working closely with the group’s list of technology and healthcare companies.
“Our vision is to build the propel-co of the future, not the holdco of the past,” said Marchand. “We are adding brands like Eleven into our portfolio and helping them achieve growth and synergies with other businesses in our network that have intelligent data, e-commerce, performance, and mobile strategies at their core.”
Madison Alley Global Ventures acted as the exclusive strategic M&A advisor to Eleven on the transaction while V7i was supported by RD Venture Partners.
ABOUT ELEVEN
Eleven is a creative agency in San Francisco that sits at the intersections of branding, advertising, design, and media. Eleven’s approach translates business, brand and product strategy into design experiences, creative content, and social conversations that connect with and surround the consumer. Eleven’s culture and process is influenced by the tech industry of the Bay Area, and clients span early to late stage startups as well as established brands such as Google, Apple, Dignity Health, Visa, Chevrolet, Shipt, SurveyMonkey, Western Governors University, Kleiner Perkins, and E&J Gallo. In 2017, Eleven was recognized as Advertising Age’s Silver Small Agency of the Year in the U.S. In 2018, Eleven was named Advertising Age’s West Coast Silver Agency of the Year and was awarded the honor of B-to-B Campaign of the Year for their NCAA work with Google Cloud.
ABOUT VISION7 AND BLUEFOCUS INTERNATIONAL
Vision7 is a fully integrated marketing communications company serving a wide range of leading North American and Global brands. Vision 7 International has four operating divisions: Cossette, Vision7 Media, Camps Collective, and Citizen Relations, which includes The Narrative Group. Cossette is a leading agency in Canada, providing fully integrated marketing communications services. Cossette has offices in Quebec City, Montreal, Toronto, Vancouver, Winnipeg and Halifax. Vision7 Media is Canada’s largest independent media planning, buying group, operating primarily under the Cossette Media and Jungle Media brands; Citizen Relations is a leading public relations company with an international presence (US, Canada, UK and Asia) and multiple global partnerships; Camps Collective is a digital-based agency group that focuses on advertising, digital marketing, Internet communications and social media.
BlueFocus International, a wholly-owned subsidiary of BlueFocus Communication Group (publicly traded Chinese company SHE: 300058), leads international strategy, M&A and cross-border initiatives for the group and manages an international portfolio of award winning digital marketing, PR, communications and advertising agencies including We Are Social, Cossette, Citizen Relations and The Camps Collective. BlueFocus International and its portfolio companies employ over 1,500 professionals across the spectrum of marketing and advertising disciplines worldwide. It serves hundreds of the world’s best-known brands from major consumer goods manufacturers to cutting-edge technology companies by providing global intelligent marketing solutions in brand strategy, digital creative production, ecommerce enablement, cloud based CRM, big data analytics, media buying, and social media insights & marketing.
SOURCE Vision7 International