You & Mr Jones is changing its name to The Brandtech Group, as the global marketing tech group seeks to underline its positioning in the category it says it pioneered and reflect its growth from a startup to a global player with $500 million in annual revenue.

The company, founded in 2015 by former Havas Global CEO David Jones, is rebranding all entities that previously carried the You & Mr Jones name (such as You & Mr Jones Media, which it launched last April). Its individual group companies, which include in-housing specialist Oliver, creative agency Gravity Road, influencer marketing agency Collectively and filmmaking specialist Mofilm, will retain their existing brand names. 

To mark the change, it has created a new logo which tweaks the "&" from You & Mr Jones and adds the words "The Brandtech Group." It is also minting the retired You & Mr Jones logo into an NFT and then distributing it as multiple tokens to Brandtech Group employees, who will get voting rights on charitable donations totaling $100,000 that the group will then make.

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Founder and CEO Jones told Ad Age an interview that the name change to Brandtech (a term that it registered as a trademark) reflects the "journey" of the company from a startup to a global company with more than 5,000 employees. 

“When we were a tiny company with no clients, I felt like You & Mr Jones seemed like a great name for the business," he said. "We've grown pretty dramatically over the last six years. We're the world's largest digital partner for a lot of big brands and big global companies. And what was an idea when I started, which was 'brandtech,' has actually become a category, and given we own the name and have the ability to use the name, I just felt the time was right to make the change."

Jones added that the rebrand also reflects the changing nature of the industry and the entry of other advertising players into the marketing tech space. "There's an incredibly exciting five or six years we're going to go through as the metaverse becomes a reality.  It's the right name as we head into Web3," he said. "Nobody wanted to be in this space six years ago but things have changed. The good news is that all the things we said were going to happen have happened; the bad news is that everybody knows that now."

Jones also emphasized the name change would be "business as usual" for the company's clients, which include Adidas, Banco Itaú, Danone, Facebook, Intuit, LVMH, Microsoft, Renault-Nissan, PayPal, and Unilever.

The rebrand follows rumors about a possible IPO for the privately-held New York-based company. Last September, Sky News reported that You & Mr Jones was in talks with banks about a New York stock market flotation. Jones dismissed this as "speculation" but added: "We have a lot of options. We could decide to raise more capital, we could end up doing a deal and obviously going public is an option, but it's not something imminent." 

The company has experienced strong growth throughout the past two years. According to Jones, You & Mr. Jones' organic revenue grew by 50% in the third quarter of 2021, rising from a 27.1% growth rate for 2020. Revenue exceeded $500 million in 2021, he said.

It has also made some key talent acquisitions, including former Mindshare chief Nick Emery to lead its new media division, and Virginie Douin, Amazon’s global head of agency partnerships, to launch a new e-commerce services unit. Dawn Dickie, the former chief financial officer at Mindshare, followed Emery to the company as chief financial officer in a move announced last week. 

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