Accenture Song CEO David Droga had been a fan of Work & Co long before his company agreed to acquire the design and tech agency earlier this week.
“Long before I did my deal with Accenture” in 2019, Droga said.
The acquisition signifies what giant consultants like Accenture value when it comes to agencies. Work & Co was founded in 2013 and has grown to nearly 400 employees working with clients including Pfizer, UnitedHealthcare, Apple, Gatorade, Google and the PGA Tour. In 2022 the agency grew revenue by 33% to $146 million.
“The acquisition brings a new arrow to the quiver for Accenture with a more strategic brand and design capability,” said Greg Paull, principal of consultancy R3. “Work & Co also enjoys a lot of C-suite discussions beyond the CMO which will have strong synergy with the rest of Accenture’s business.”
Mohan Ramaswamy, Work & Co’s co-founder and strategy partner, said that the agency had been approached numerous times about being acquired in the past, but it was never the right time or partner.
“The beauty of Accenture and Song in particular is that they are that blend of creativity and technology, but just at a different scale fundamentally,” Ramaswamy said. “So having their backing, the network of clients they collaborate with [allows Work] the ability to build out our own capabilities and do things at a global scale we weren’t able to do on our own, or it would’ve taken many, many years to get there. It feels like we just leapfrogged our growth process.”
Work & Co will fit within Accenture Song’s Design and digital products practice. Its other practices include commerce, marketing and service. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
Read more: Accenture Song to buy Work & Co
Generative AI
A key reason for the acquisition was Work & Co’s generative artificial intelligence capabilities that it has built over the years, according to Droga.
“I admired their leadership for how they pivoted much more into AI and generative AI before a lot of the other companies out there,” Droga said. “We are fortunate that Accenture was in there long before it became topical. When it made the headlines, Accenture already had been in there for a long time, but I admired the fact they were as well.”
Also read: Accenture leans into AI with $3 billion investment
Specifically, Droga said he liked that Work & Co was using AI as part of its offerings rather than looking at generative AI as a “widget.”
“A lot of people talk about generative AI like it’s just a new whizbang feature and they’re going to just change someone’s title and that's not what it is,” Droga said. “[AI] is not meant to replace ideas or creativity of the user, it’s just to enhance and allow us to do things we couldn’t do before in a more human way.”
Ramaswamy said he believes most agencies are focused on “marketing automation” when it comes to the use of AI. He said his agency is more focused on building the next generation of customer experiences.
Currently, around 30%-40% of Work & Co’s revenue comes from AI-enabled work, according to Ramaswamy.