Top agency mergers of 2021

This was a banner year for agency review consultants, but not so much for investment bankers. Maybe it was the pandemic, which led to layoffs and contractions, or the fact that holding companies are now so sprawling that they are spending much of their time merging and purging existing units together. Or perhaps the industry is simply reaching critical mass. Whatever the reason, things were slow on the merger front in 2021—unless you were Martin Sorrell, Mark Penn or Ryan Reynolds. Here are three big deals that went down in 2021. See Ad Age’s 2021 Year in Review here. MDC Partners and Stagwell Group It was a long time coming, but Mark Penn's Stagwell Group finally completed its merger with MDC Partners in July, almost a year after it was proposed. The combination yielded a single holding company with $2.1 billion in revenue comprised of agencies including Code and Theory, 6 Degrees, Anomaly, 72andSunny, Doner and more operating under the Stagwell name. The transaction was in part dragged out over opposition from MDC shareholder Indaba Capital Management, which blasted the original offer as a "sweetheart deal" while Stagwell, in turn, argued it was fair. After some haggling and a revised offer, the merger was approved by 77.6% support of shares cast at a July 26 special meeting of shareholders. Read: S4 merges with ... everyone S4 Capital, the self-described "anti-holding company," began the year busily adding holdings to its two original companies: Media Monks and Mighty Hive. S4's model offers 50% cash and 50% stock to companies it partners with, so it terms the processes mergers rather acqusitions. In January, Decoded was merged into S4's content arm Media Monks and Metric Theory merged into data and digital media arm Mighty Hive. Then in March, digital hotshop Jam3 joined the ranks of S4 and was folded into Media Monks. But S4 still wasn't done. In August, its Executive Chairman Martin Sorrell, whose LinkedIn now refers to him as a "senior monk," rolled all the S4 companies into one. The 24 companies previously under the Media Monks and Mighty Hive monikers have now been united into one group, Media.Monks, adopting that name and operating under one P&L. And in September, it added yet another merger partner: culture agency Cashmere. Read: “We've created what we call an API model based around six foundational structures,” said Media.Monks Co-founder Wesley ter Haar. “We call them the six Cs. We have our client teams, country teams, capability teams, core teams, our corporate teams, which is corporate services like best-in-class HR and legal and finance, and then our category teams. Each of these teams have leadership and they define their interface to the rest of the organization.” Maximum Effort and MNTN Ad tech firm MNTN pulled off a coup in June by acquiring Ryan Reynolds' ad agency Maximum Effort. The actor, whose agency swiftly made a name for itself with ads featuring Hugh Jackman for Laughing Man coffee, hilarious spots for Match.com and clever commercials for Reynolds' own Aviation Gin, announced the acquisition in his inmitable way with a video in which he played his own twin brother. In a statement, Reynolds said that “we wanted a future for our marketing arm that ensured we could continue to move fast, have fun and do really rewarding work. I was blown away by the simplicity and speed of MNTN’s technology and how it opens up access to TV for advertisers who can’t afford upfront agreements. I believe the combination of our companies will create a 1+1 equals 3 situation, assuming my math checks out. It was never my strong suit.” “Creative is the center of the advertising industry and I’ve always thought it odd to have creative and media walled off from each other,” added Mark Douglas, CEO of MNTN. “Maximum Effort’s work speaks for itself and having spent a lot of time with Ryan, I know I’ve found a partner who likes to move fast and take big swings.” He also apparently moves mountains. Read: Ad Age Datacenter's Agency Report 2021 See Ad Age’s 2021 Year in Review here.

Top agency mergers of 2021

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