Company type | Public company |
---|---|
Industry | Advertising |
Founded | July 1, 1996 |
Headquarters | , |
Website |
|
BlueFocus Communication Group( Chinese: 蓝色光标) is an ad agency engaged in marketing. [1]
BlueFocus was founded by Oscar Zhao on July 1, 1996. [2] It was launched on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 2010. [3]
BlueFocus acquired a minority stake in Huntsworth, a London-based PR group, for £36.5 million in April 2013, [2] [4] and in December 2013, acquired a majority holding in social media marketing organisation We Are Social for £18.7m. [5]
Since 2014, BlueFocus has engaged in international expansion. [1] It acquired a majority holding in Fuseproject, a U.S. design agency, for $46.7 million in July 2014, [6] and a majority holding in the North American assets of Canadian advertising company Vision7 International, including Cossette, an ad agency, and Citizen Relation, a PR company, in December 2014 for $210 million. [7]
By 2014, it was listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange with a market capitalisation of $3.8 billion, [2] and was ranked as the 17th largest ad agency in the world. [1] As of 2015, its clients included PepsiCo, Lenovo, Volkswagen, and BMW. [8]
In 2017, it attempted to merge its international efforts with US-based Fluent, but eventually discontinued the effort over political concerns. [9] In 2019, it advanced into an arrangement whereby its international subsidiaries were partially divested into a separate company Blue Impact, which was to be purchased by a special purpose acquisition company ( SPAC) Legacy Acquisition led by ex- Procter & Gamble executives Edwin Rigaud and Darryl McCall to publicly list in the United States. [9] [10]