Bain & Company is set to acquire digital marketing agency FRWD after several years of successful collaboration. The acquisition fits into Bain's strategy of building out its digital marketing offerings, helping clients maximize their marketing reach and effectiveness by integrating consumer data into clients' broader marketing strategies. And there may be more acquisitions on the horizon for Bain, hints Elizabeth Spaulding, co-head of Bain's digital practice. Consulting sat down with Spaulding to talk about the acquisition, how FRWD fits into Bain's overall strategy, and how marketing is changing to keep pace with shifting consumer behavior.
Consulting: Can you tell us how the FRWD acquisition came to be?
Spaulding: We've been teaming up with them for about three years and we've just seen really tremendous results. The acquisition resulted from a few things, the first is very like-minded cultures in terms of driving very hands-on impact with our clients and really being able to see demonstrative results. The second is this is just a whole new area of change as a result of digital and technology that we're just observing as super important for our clients who are marketers, more broadly those participating in commerce platforms, and it's no longer sufficient to advise and identify the opportunity but in fact help our clients really convert these ideas into hands-on capabilities and results. What FRWD brings to the table were some assets we didn't have internally that we felt were very additive to the kind of work we were doing with clients. We see the space continuing to expand, really just a broad disruption of the traditional agency model, one where we think more and more our clients are going to need to be building the analytics and execution capability within their in-house team. Through acquiring FRWD our plan is to scale that capability further across our regions, which will help us assist our clients through this major transition they're experiencing.
