San Francisco-based agency Barrett Hofherr has acquired Funworks, a creative agency that incorporates sketch and improv comedy into its creative process. 

The acquisition will provide Barrett Hofherr with stronger capabilities with consumer-packaged goods clients, said Barrett Hofherr’s Founder and Chief Creative Officer Jamie Barrett. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Funworks Co-Founder and Chief Creative Officer Craig Mangan will join Todd Eisner as executive creative director and also work alongside Barrett. Barrett will retain his current title but plans to work more closely with Partner and Chief Strategy Officer Matt Hofherr, taking on a more “outward-facing” role as Eisner and Mangan take over the daily duties of the creative department.

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Part of the outward-facing role will include a new tool the agency is launching next month: a “brand momentum score” that Hofherr likened to a “net promoter score, only on steroids,” that will give clients their own dashboards. The score will allow brands to track and impact their momentum with consumers and “test different theories and strategies,” Hofherr said. 

The hope is that the tool will lead to Barrett Hofherr launching its own analytics company, according to Hofherr, who said the agency is in talks with venture capital firms to see what’s possible.

“When we invest in ourselves, it really pays dividends,” Barrett said, citing the shop’s move to bring on Hofherr in 2021 as an example.

Behind the acquisition 

The acquisition fills a void for Barrett Hoffher and marks a reunion for Mangan and Barrett, who worked together at Omnicom Group’s Goodby Silverstein & Partners for over a decade.

In addition to experience with CPG, Funworks also has worked in gaming, an area of focus for Barrett Hofherr. Barrett Hofherr recently launched a campaign for Niantic Lab’s “Monster Hunter Now” mobile game.

Launched in 2015 and based in Oakland California, Funworks’ clients include Clorox, Ubisoft, Amazon, Pinterest, Logitech, ESPN and Hint Water.

Along with Niantic, Barrett Hofherr’s largest clients include Habit Grill, DXL, Doordash and Yahoo. (Mangan was recently a voice actor in Barrett Hofherr’s latest Habit Grill campaign, which included an animated charcoal briquette.)

Barrett Hofherr will now have more than 50 staffers, said Hofherr, who declined to provide the number of Funworks employees.

Hitting a ceiling

The deal made sense for Funworks because it had hit “a ceiling” and lost some focus on marketing and advertising, Mangan said. Over the years the partners at Funworks invested in a sibling company called Funmentum Labs, which built the brainstorming process the agency utilizes into a separate business. The Lab is focused on using AI software to create more engaging and “fun” brainstorming processes for other businesses.

“We still work together all the time, but spreading it out like that took our focus off of marketing and advertising,” Mangan said. “We started just hitting a ceiling and then when Matt, Jamie and I started talking, we were like, ‘Man, if we got together, this could unleash both of us … we could really start scaling in a way that we hadn’t seen before.’ Not in the sense of just being a big agency, but really just providing more value to clients on a much higher level.”

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Funmentum Labs will remain separate and isn’t part of the acquisition, though Barrett Hofherr will utilize its software.

Funworks Co-Founder and CEO Paul Charney spent over a year as the CEO of Funmentum Labs. Earlier this year, Charney joined Meta as the head of creative at its content studio. Two former Funworks executives are currently still leading Funmentum Labs.