London, 7 March 2023 – Advent International (“Advent”), one of the world’s largest and most experienced private equity investors, has entered into an agreement to sell Tag, a leading global omnichannel marketing production company, to Dentsu Group Inc. (Tokyo: 4324; ISIN: JP3551520004), one of world’s largest global marketing and advertising agency networks.
In the past five years, Advent has invested more than €100 million in Tag, which has grown to become a leading global end-to-end, tech enabled marketing activation platform. Tag’s global footprint and offerings have expanded substantially, it has developed an end to end proprietary marketing execution platform called Digital Interact (Di) and acquired six strategic businesses, enhancing Tag’s CGI, e-commerce, content origination, and data analytics capabilities. Tag now has a truly global presence, with a world class diverse leadership team who oversee 2,800 employees in over 29 countries across EMEA, APAC and the Americas. Tag’s end-to-end platform provides digital, personalised marketing for many of the world’s leading brands.
James Brocklebank, Managing Partner at Advent International, said, “Since acquiring Tag in 2017, and following more than €100 million of investment, the business has been transformed to become a highly successful standalone entity that is now one of the world’s leading omnichannel digital marketing production companies.”
Chris Benson, Director at Advent International, said, “We have worked in partnership with Tag’s leadership team to build a world leader in marketing activation. Under Advent’s ownership, the company has grown significantly and continues to achieve double digit organic revenue growth. We are excited for Tag and dentsu to build on this success and we wish David Kassler and his team all the best as they start this next phase of their journey.”
David Kassler, Global CEO, Tag, said, “We can’t wait to start this next phase of our journey and couldn’t be happier to be joining the dentsu family. The market is moving incredibly fast towards integrated services – the combination of Tag’s global technology-enabled content production with dentsu’s broader marketing, technology and consulting skills will be tremendously additive for both sets of our wonderful clients.”
Advent acquired Williams Lea Tag from Deutsche Post DHL Group in December 2017, before successfully separating Williams Lea and Tag into standalone businesses. Williams Lea, a high growth provider of tech-enabled business support services for a hybrid workforce, serving some of the world’s largest financial, legal and consulting firms, remains under Advent’s ownership.
Evercore, UBS, Weil, EY, and PWC acted as advisors to Advent.
About Advent InternationalFounded in 1984, Advent International is one of the largest and most experienced global private equity investors. The firm has invested in over 400 private equity investments across 41 countries, and as of September 30, 2022, had $89 billion in assets under management. With 14 offices in 12 countries, Advent has established a globally integrated team of over 285 private equity investment professionals across North America, Europe, Latin America and Asia. The firm focuses on investments in five core sectors, including business and financial services; health care; industrial; retail, consumer and leisure; and technology. For more information, please visit www.adventinternational.com and follow Advent on LinkedIn.
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About TagTag works with leading brands to transform their business and marketing capabilities to deliver content at speed and scale across channels, cultures, and regions. With intelligent, sustainable, and technology-driven solutions (including their own end to end proprietary marketing execution platform called Digital Interact) at the heart of everything it does, Tag enables brands to operate more efficiently and effectively to stand out, grow and waste less. The organization will become dentsu’s sixth network brand and will retain the Tag brand for the foreseeable future.
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About dentsuDentsu is the network designed for what’s next, helping clients predict and plan for disruptive future opportunities and create new paths to growth in the sustainable economy. Taking a people-centered approach to business transformation, we use insights to connect brand, content, commerce and experience, underpinned by modern creativity. As part of Dentsu Group Inc. (Tokyo: 4324; ISIN: JP3551520004), we are headquartered in Tokyo, Japan and our 65,000-strong employee-base of dedicated professionals work across four regions (Japan, Americas, EMEA and APAC). Dentsu combines Japanese innovation with a diverse, global perspective to drive client growth and to shape society. dentsu website: Dentsu Group Inc. website:
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Graeme Wilson or Harry Cameron
Advent@tulchangroup.com
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