Friday, November 2, 2007

Dentsu Purchases Attik and Implications

If you are not familiar with Attik, you may be with some of their work, most recently the Little Deviants site they created on behalf of Toyota's Scion brand. A great campaign, and an even better micro site experience.

Recently Attik was purchased by Dentsu, Japan's largest ad agency. Attik started in the UK, and grew into a global interactive agency, having multiple US offices. Many in the industry have regarded this as a Japanese agency purchasing a US company. A trend is creeping into the recent purchasing trend for interactive content companies. International buyers of US companies. In the past it seemed many of the digital shops were purchased by large US ad conglomerates as a nice digital addition to an already bloated portfolio.

Recently it seems as though American creative in the digital arena is being snatched up by global suitors. There are a few implications that may start to occur:
1. International dollars fueling what may be an emerging bubble in the online space
2. Some large US players missing out due to aggressive non US companies that have money to burn
3. More new techniques and a broader range of styles, interface experiences and heavier interaction in this online creative - checked out many European or Japanese sites lately? Very innovative stuff going on in many cases.
4. Environments that are using mobile more ubiquitously and are leveraging faster connection speeds will be working directly with American companies that are not used to these environments. What effect will this have on our side of the pond?

No comments: