NEW YORK: Cohn & Wolfe has merged with sister WPP Group agency GCI Group. The combined company will retain the name Cohn & Wolfe (C&W). C&W CEO Donna Imperato will remain CEO, and GCI Group CEO Jeff Hunt will remain president. Hunt confirmed the details of the acquisition.
The agency will retain the name Cohn & Wolfe, but will be rebranded with a new logo and branding strategy.
The agency will also include a separate, global specialty healthcare firm called GCI Health that can compete with C&W's own healthcare practice.
"For a while, we thought keeping the two brands separate would be the right way to go, but we changed that because the communications landscape has changed. The world has gone global, and together we're much more of a forceful competitor globally," said C&W CEO Donna Imperato. "Cohn has heritage creativity – we're known as the creative agency – while GCI has been the leader in digital, and when you combine those, you become the agency that clients are looking for today.”
"We're taking the creative heritage of Cohn & Wolfe with the digital expertise of GCI and we're putting those two together to compete in the new world order brought on by the digital media revolution," Hunt told PRWeek. "The two firms are very synergistic being that there is very little overlap. It immediately catapults us into the top ten of PR firms on a combined basis. It also allows us to aggressively invest in new areas, like the Asia-Pacific region. "
The merged agencies will have about 1,000 employees. Cohn & Wolfe will remain based in New York. GCI Health will also be based in New York, but will include operations in Europe.
GCI Group joined WPP when the holding company announced it was acquiring Grey Global Group in September 2004. Cohn & Wolfe joined WPP in 2000, when the holding company acquired Y&R Brands. Neither brands disclosed revenues in PRWeek's last agency rankings report. The two agencies have been long-rumored as a merger opportunity for WPP.
Prior to the merger, the firms have operated conjunctively on occasion for business pitches, but have also competed for clients.