The Brandtech Group
In January, You & Mr Jones changed its name to The Brandtech Group.
The company, founded in 2015 by former Havas Global CEO David Jones, rebranded all entities that previously carried the You & Mr Jones name (such as You & Mr Jones Media). Its individual group companies, which include in-housing specialist Oliver, creative agency Gravity Road, influencer marketing agency Collectively and filmmaking specialist Mofilm, retained their existing brand names.
Jones told Ad Age in a January interview that the name change 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."
The new agency logo includes an homage to the old name. The “&” from You & Mr Jones is featured prominently next to the words "The Brandtech Group."
EssenceMediacom and GroupM Nexus
In April, WPP’s GroupM announced several shakeups within its media agencies. Essence and Mediacom are merging to form the new entity EssenceMediacom, which won’t officially launch until January 2023. As part of the restructuring, Finecast, Xaxis and GroupM Services combined to form GroupM Nexus. Mindshare merged with performance marketing shop Neo. All of these moves were steps to simplify GroupM’s operations.
Nick Lawson, who was then the global CEO of MediaCom, stepped in to lead the new EssenceMediacom as global CEO. EssenceMediacom will encompass 10,000 employees across 125 offices.
“Through GroupM Nexus and our agency powerhouses Mindshare, Wavemaker and EssenceMediacom, we are building a tech-enabled future, side by side with our clients, that is accountable to advertisers’ growth goals and to our vision for an advertising ecosystem that works for everyone," Christian Juhl, global CEO of GroupM, said in an April statement.
Vayner3
In July 2021, Vaynermedia CEO Gary Vaynerchuk launched VaynerNFT with Anheuser-Busch InBev as its first client. As part of the partnership, VaynerNFT dropped a collection of 12,722 NFTs for Bud Light prior to the beer brand’s Super Bowl spot that featured NFTs and promoted its light beer brand Bud Light Next. In November 2021, Vayner also helped release 1,936 Budweiser-themed NFTs, which sold out in an hour.
Almost exactly a year later, the NFT consultancy was rebranded as Vayner3 to reflect a shift in the company’s strategy to focus on broader Web3 work rather than just NFTs. This came around the same time as work in the metaverse had grown in popularity in the industry and multiple agencies launched their own Web3 consultancies.
“I have always believed that technology is a tremendous tool to help us understand consumer behavior and drive social interactions through culture,” Vaynerchuk said in a July statement about the name change. “The world of Web3 is the next iteration of consumer behavior.”