The New York Times, as part of an ongoing effort to offer more creative and marketing services to agencies and clients, has acquired the design agency Fake Love, the company announced Friday.
Fake Love, which this year was named Ad Age's small agency of the year for the Northeast region, is based in Brooklyn, and describes itself as "a design driven experiential agency that creates unconventional immersive and artistic projects."
In a release, the Times said Fake Love "will further expand the creative services of T Brand Studio, the Times Company's marketing services agency, by enabling it to grow its experiential marketing, virtual reality and augmented reality capabilities."
The Times declined to disclose the price of the acquisition.
Fake Love has 10 employees, and a Times spokeswoman told Ad Agency that the agency "will continue to operate independently."
Digital advertising is an extremely important component of the Times' revenue pie, and the company recently reported a disapointing 6.8% year-over-year drop in digital advertising revenue for the second quarter of the year.
Acquiring agencies like Fake Love is seen as a way of increasing what the Times can do for advertisers. In March, the company acquired HelloSociety, an agency that taps so-called influencers to help spread marketing campaigns. Times Co. Chief Financial Officer James Follo said on an earnings call in May that the company paid approximately $12 million to snap up the agency, which, like Fake Love, will supplement T Brand Studio.
When asked in March about the possibility of buying more agencies like HelloSociety, Times CEO Mark Thompson told Ad Age he'd be interested "if we can find other companies which help us develop the range of marketing services that we can offer clients, or help us with some other part of our strategy."