WME-IMG has filled a key area of need for its global partnership group by acquiring a pair of experiential marketing agencies.
Fusion Marketing and IMG Live will be folded into WME-IMG’s global partnerships group, formerly known as WME-IMG’s consulting division. IMG Live was a separate business that spun off from IMG in 2007 but retained the name.
The two acquisitions represent the first big moves by WME-IMG since a $250 million capital investment by SoftBank in March, which was intended to accelerate the company’s growth.
Financial terms of the two acquisitions were not available.
Fusion Marketing and IMG Live are two agencies that have worked with WME-IMG and its clients in the past, so there already was a strong familiarity before acquisition talks heated up, said Greg D’Alba, WME-IMG’s president of the global partnerships group. Those initial talks preceded the investment by SoftBank, but the acquisitions still reflect WME-IMG’s focus on growth, the company said.
D’Alba said the experiential marketing expertise helps round out the global partnerships group into more of a one-stop shop for clients.
“Everything we’re trying to do within global partnerships is to keep our in-house capabilities at the forefront and streamlined,” D’Alba said. “We continue to look for ways to expand our ability to deliver in-house. Fusion and Live give us a dimension that we don’t have to farm out anymore.”
It was June 2014 when D’Alba was hired away from Turner to transform WME-IMG’s consulting business into more of a cross-company global sales and marketing unit. D’Alba was considered the first big hire by co-CEOs Ari Emanuel and Patrick Whitesell after the deal for WME to buy IMG had closed a month earlier.
In the 22 months since, the renamed global partnerships group has grown its head count and increased its number of clients, all of which has helped boost revenue, D’Alba said. The big wins during that time have been Anheuser-Busch InBev and Visa, but D’Alba also boasted expanded business with major brands like Marriott, NRG and HSBC.
At the same time, D’Alba and his team re-created the consulting business into six areas of expertise: strategy and activation, experiential marketing, sponsorships and endorsements, naming rights, research, and communications.
Fusion Marketing’s Bill Decker and IMG Live’s Bryan Icenhower will stay on as co-managers of experiential marketing, and both will report to D’Alba. Lee Heffernan, CEO and co-founder of IMG Live, plans to retire.
“We’re covering a lot of ground here with these brand relationships,” D’Alba said. “We don’t want to be transactional; we don’t want to be a one-off. We want to create sustainable businesses and partnerships so that we can connect the dots for the brand.”
Connecting the dots, D’Alba said, often means matching up a client’s need with one of the many properties in the WME-IMG portfolio, from media, fashion, entertainment and college sports to the recently acquired Professional Bull Riders or Miss Universe. The goal, he said, is to “establish ourselves as the agency that covers the most ground, and this is where we have the most access.”
