EssenceMediacom Expands Sofology Brief and DFS Partnership With Digital Scope Win

The expansion reflects success of digital and creative expertise within the agency, including its Data Practice and Creative Futures division

Following the renewal of its commercial contract with DFS Group earlier this year, WPP media agency EssenceMediacom, announces today that it has won Sofology’s digital brief, consolidating the full media scope.

Already holding a Linear TV and Broadcast VOD scope, EssenceMediacom has now expanded the brief to include Sofology’s £4m spend on digital channels, including search, increasing their full spend with the brand to £10m across all channels. Using breakthroughs in 1st party data and full-funnel strategy, EssenceMediacom will be working to drive revenue growth for the brand across all channels. The incumbent for the digital scope is the7stars.

The win reflects EssenceMediacom’s strategic focus, with 80% of EssenceMediacom’s wins in the last 18 months consisting of digital assignments. The digital and data practices have helped galvanise this effort: EssenceMediacom’s eCommerce Centre of Excellence launched in 2021 and grew significantly across 2022, while the launch of its Data Practice the same year has since enabled an ever increasing number of media activations to be powered by clients’ first-party data.

This expansion also follows a number of wins and contract renewals for the new agency since its launch earlier this year, including Flutter Entertainment and Sky Bet, DFS, Cancer Research UK, eBay and Sony PlayStation. The scope of work spans a range of disciplines from Digital to addressable creative to Social, Planning and Buying.

EssenceMediacom’s position as a leader in creativity in the media space has been central to this growth. The agency’s Creative Futures practice grew significantly in 2022, guided by talent including the recently promoted Lindsey Jordan, Managing Partner Creative Strategy and ECD Tom Curtis. The practice is responsible for several of the agency’s multi-award winning campaigns, including the multi-award winning eBay ‘Pre-Loved’ campaign TUI’s creation of a branded Amazon Prime show, World Cook.

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Kate Rowlinson, CEO, EssenceMediacom UK, says: “Expanding our long standing partnership with DFS Group and scope of work with Sofology with a digital brief speaks to the significant innovation and growth across several of our digital disciplines. With key client partners like Sofology, which is an extremely exciting home brand in the UK, recognising the power of our insight capabilities, creative talent and technology, I’m excited to see the momentum we are building during this new phase of the business.”

Jan Duckworth, Brand Director, Sofology, says: “We are excited to work with EssenceMediacom and capitalise our impact across all channels with the budget we have, as the media playbook becomes ever increasingly interdependent, very quickly! By having the opportunity to tap into EM’s massive insights, media expertise and technology we aim to flawlessly punch even higher above our weight.”

EssenceMediacom UK is part of GroupM’s newest and largest agency, committed to delivering marketing breakthroughs for brands. It has disrupted the old models across media, creative, innovation and analytics to find new opportunities for advertisers and deliver truly integrated media solutions.

Born out of two pioneering agencies, EssenceMediacom fuses Essence’s performance, data, analytics and creative technology DNA with MediaCom’s scaled multichannel audience planning and strategic media expertise.

As part of WPP, the world’s largest marketing communications services group, and GroupM, WPP’s consolidated media investment management arm, we have access to the richest data, most robust benchmarks and most advanced capabilities in the market. This helps us provide comprehensive solutions to all marketing challenges.

Our ‘breakthrough’ ambition is underpinned by our commitment to ‘continuous learning’. We aim to ensure our people fulfil their potential by investing their whole-person wellbeing, careers and capabilities, which in turn helps grow our clients’ businesses.

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