Dentsu Group Inc. has completed the acquisition of Tag Group, a global omnichannel digital marketing production shop. The announceent of Dentsu entering into a definitive agreement to buy Tag from Advent International came back in March.
The acquisition substantially bolsters dentsu’s creative production capabilities, integrated, full-service offerings and end to end capabilities across all media channels. Aligned to dentsu’s Customer Transformation and Technology (CT&T) strategy, the addition of Tag takes CT&T net revenues to 36% from 35% for Q1FY2023. Dentsu has set “Business Transformation and Growth,” as one of the four pillars of its medium-term management plan and one of the priorities is to reach 50% of its revenues from CT&T.
Operating as dentsu’s sixth agency brand, Tag will continue to offer its digital infrastructure and services to provide high quality content at speed and scale for creative. The acquisition sees dentsu welcoming 2,800 additional colleagues located across 29 countries around the world, with one global production hub and 10 specialist hubs. A key foundation of Tag’s successful client offering is Digital Interact (Di), a unified martech platform which helps marketers better manage campaigns, access, automate and optimize content, and seamlessly tap into Tag’s global creative production, sourcing and transcreation networks. Tag will remain a distinct brand within dentsu, will continue to be led by Tag’s global CEO David Kassler, and will remain headquartered in London.
Hiroshi Igarashi, president and CEO, Dentsu Group Inc. said, “The acquisition of Tag comes at a time when clients are demanding both scale and depth of capability in our creative offering in order to effectively influence the customer journey. Adding Tag’s world-class team and technology platforms to dentsu’s existing service set provides our clients with an unbeatable combination of scaled content delivery and dynamic personalization. David and his team have built an incredible organization and we are looking forward to working closely with them.”
Kassler said, “The Tag team are truly excited to bring our AI-driven technology and global content capabilities to add immediate value to dentsu’s clients and supercharge their marketing execution in combination with dentsu’s world class services.”
Full Lineup Set For AFI Fest; Official Selections Span 44 Countries, Include 9 Best International Feature Oscar Submissions
The American Film Institute (AFI) has unveiled the full lineup for this year’s AFI Fest, taking place in Los Angeles from October 23-27. Rounding out the slate of already announced titles are such highlights as September 5 directed by Tim Fehlbaum, All We Imagine As Light directed by Payal Kapadia, The Luckiest Man in America directed by Samir Oliveros (AFI Class of 2019), Zurawski v. Texas from executive producers Hillary Clinton, Chelsea Clinton and Jennifer Lawrence and directors Maisie Crow and Abbie Perrault, and Oh, Canada directed by Paul Schrader (AFI Class of 1969). A total of 158 films are set to screen at the 38th edition of AFI Fest.
Of the official selections, 48% are directed by women and non-binary filmmakers and 26% are directed by BIPOC filmmakers.
Additional festival highlights include documentaries Architecton directed by Victor Kossakovsky; Cheech & Chong’s Last Movie directed by David Bushell; Devo directed by Chris Smith about the legendary new wave provocateurs; Gaucho Gaucho directed by Michael Dweck and Gregory Kershaw; Group Therapy directed by Neil Berkeley with Emmy® winner Neil Patrick Harris and Tig Notaro; No Other Land directed by a Palestinian-Israeli team comprised of Basel Adra, Yuval Abraham, Rachel Szor and Hamdan Ballal; Pavements directed by Alex Ross Perry; and Separated directed by Errol Morris. Notable narrative titles include Black Dog (Gou Zen) directed by Guan Hu; Bonjour Tristesse directed by Durga Chew-Bose with Academy Award® nominee Chloë Sevigny; Caught By The Tides directed by Jia Zhangke; Hard Truths directed by Mike Leigh with... Read More