Sorrell's S4Capital Buys Data-driven Circus Marketing

WPP founder Sir Martin Sorrell's marcoms business S4Capital has merged its content practice with Mexico City-based data-driven digital agency Circus Marketing. Terms of the deal have not been disclosed.

Founded in 2005 by Bruno Lambertini (pictured), Circus creates multicultural content strategies and campaigns for brands such as Netflix, Spotify, Google, Facebook, and Uber. Services include insights and planning, data science, experience design, marketing automation, content strategy and production. Through the deal, Circus will join S4Capital's content practice, built around its first acquisition of creative digital production company MediaMonks.

S4Capital says the merger will further strengthen its content expertise and position in the LatAm region with the addition of projected revenues of $38m and gross profit of $20m in 2019 (up 21% and 25% respectively on 2018). It will also add Circus' 350 professionals, who work as one team across eight locations in Mexico, Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Costa Rica, Chile, Los Angeles in the US and Spain.

The move follows last year's merger of MightyHive, S4Capital's programmatic practice, with Brazil-based consulting firm ProgMedia. Sorrell comments: 'Bruno Lambertini, Ignacio Liaudat and Luis Alonso and their colleagues at Circus share our vision of focusing on purely digital content, unencumbered by analogue baggage. Circus also embraces our data-driven holy trinity model and embodies faster, better, cheaper or speed, quality and value. They are buying into our unitary model, combining seamlessly with our content and programmatic practices.'

Web sites: www.s4capital.com and www.circusmarketing.com .