Maru Group Acquired by Stagwell

Research, insight and advisory services provider Maru Group has been acquired by marcoms network Stagwell, which already owns both the Harris and Harris Poll brands. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Maru Group, which was founded in 2016, is led by former Synovate/Ipsos Global CEO Ged Parton (pictured). The group's HUB offers a scalable survey platform that allows in-house marketers to analyze behavioral, transactional and attitudinal data all in one place. With tens of millions of survey completes processed a year, the HUB manages research from ad hoc studies to global trackers, while arrangements with fourteen vetted sample partners worldwide allow Maru to connect clients with profiled respondents.

Maru will now become part of the Stagwell Marketing Cloud (SMC), which offers a suite of technology products for in-house marketers, spanning capabilities from brand intelligence to media activation and influencer management. According to Stagwell, the deal will strengthen SMC's global client list and presence, including in Buenos Aires, Chicago, London, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco, Southampton, Toronto and Vancouver. Maru joins Stagwell's other recent acquisition, AI-powered platform Apollo Program, which taps digital data including in-app behaviour to uncover consumer, creative and contextual insights for marketing use.

Parton comments: 'Maru's suite provides real-time access to insight and results, bringing into one ecosystem adaptive interpretation of behavioral, transactional and attitudinal consumer data. By joining SMC, we're scaling our services to some of the fastest-growing brands worldwide and translating our belief that understanding the intersection between behavior and emotion is critical to establishing the strongest possible consumer connection to drive better business results'.

Web sites: www.stagwellglobal.com and www.marugroup.net .

All articles 2006-23 written and edited by Mel Crowther and/or Nick Thomas, 2024- by Nick Thomas, unless otherwise stated.