Velocity, Vivid team in new agency

Velocity Sports & Entertainment is uniting with Vivid Marketing and two other agencies owned by marketing communications holding company Aegis Group to form a single sports and entertainment agency operating under the name Team Epic.

Joining Velocity and event agency Vivid are market research group SRi and a portion of the digital shop Isobar.

The combined entity will have its own P&L, total more than 200 people and $30 million in billings with offices in Norwalk, Conn.; Atlanta; Charlotte; Boston; San Francisco; and London. It will tout a client list that includes AT&T, FedEx, IBM, Sports Illustrated, Charles Schwab and Mars.

Team Epic will be run by a committee consisting of current Velocity principals David Grant, Mike Reisman, Bob Wilhelmy and Alex Nieroth, along with Vivid principals Erik Peterson and Andy Cook. Cook will be Team Epic’s chief creative officer. The combined service offering is intended to allow the firm to better compete against other competitors owned by communications conglomerates like Radiate Group and Omnicom’s Diversified Agency Services.

The Team Epic offering will have four lead offerings: strategy and campaign development, experiential marketing, digital marketing and measurement/analytics.

“The relationship between brand and consumer is changing, and we wanted a new and seamless offering with capabilities to meet that changing landscape,” Reisman said. He added that Velocity, Vivid and SRi will remain as brands for the time being, but be merged eventually.