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Dive Brief:

• Accenture has acquired the social and creator-focused agency Whalar from Whalar Group, according to a press release. Financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed.
• Whalar will join Accenture Song, the consultancy’s marketing services division, to tie together insights, social commerce and artificial intelligence-driven discovery. Whalar has managed more than $600 million in creator campaigns across major platforms and is credited with offering sophisticated measurement capabilities. 
• Accenture has been snapping up shops that specialize in social as brands allocate more of their media budgets to the channel. The consultancy is also striking a three-year strategic partnership with Whalar Group to support innovation in creator marketing.  

Dive Insight:

Adding Whalar to its roster could help Accenture Song capitalize on opportunities in growing channels like social commerce and recognizes that creator marketing is evolving from an add-on tactic to a larger driver of strategy. Creators are now a core media channel for many marketers, according to a recent Interactive Advertising Bureau report cited by Accenture, and will command about $44 billion in U.S. ad spending this year. 

Accenture leadership emphasized that the emergence of creator-first marketing requires a new type of expertise that combines talent relationship-building, rich platform knowledge and technology know-how.

“Bringing Whalar into Accenture Song lets us pair creator authenticity with the intelligence and scale to deliver work that’s not just produced but felt. Because as the agentic economy grows, what wins won’t be the most content — it will be what is most original and the most human,” said Dimitri Maex, global marketing practice lead at Accenture Song, in a press statement around the deal. 

The announcement underscored Whalar’s industry accolades, which have been earned through both creative and measurement expertise. The shop has managed tens of thousands of creator collaborations and thousands of activations in over 40 countries and 15 languages. It leverages media mix modeling integrations and third-party research to track how campaigns deliver results for brands. 

Whalar co-CEOs Emma Harman and Jo Cronk will maintain their leadership roles following the acquisition’s completion, which is still subject to customary closing conditions. Whalar, which is a decade old, employs over 170 people across the U.S., U.K., Ireland, Germany and Spain. 

Whalar Group, the agency’s former parent, will otherwise continue to operate as usual, the announcement said. The company, which owns Sixteenth, Foam, Moby Ventures, The Lighthouse and The Business of Creativity, is also partnering with Accenture to further initiatives around the creator economy. 

Accenture built out its marketing services division through a flurry of dealmaking starting in the 2010s and introduced the Song branding in 2022. Recent years have seen the consultancy honing focus on social, including by acquiring the social-first agency Superdigital and Unlimited, a customer engagement agency. More traditional ad-holding groups have also ramped up M&A activity to gain an advantage with creator marketing.