Company type | Subsidiary |
---|---|
Industry | Information Technology, Advertising, Marketing |
Founded | 2005 |
Founder | Andrew Shebbeare
Andy Bonsall Matt Isaacs |
Fate | Acquired by WPP plc, Nov 2015 Merged with Mediacom, Feb 2023 |
Successor | Essence Mediacom |
Number of locations | Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Singapore, South Korea, USA, Canada, Germany, UK |
Key people | Matt Isaacs (CEO until 2014)
Christian Juhl (CEO 2014 - 2019) Kyoko Matsushita CEO (2019 - 2023) |
Revenue | $4 billion (total billings) [1] |
Number of employees | 2000 [1] |
Parent | GroupM [2] |
Website | essenceglobal.com |
Essence was a global data and measurement-driven full service agency that merged with Mediacom in January 2023 to form Essence Mediacom, [3] . Prior to the merger, Essence had 20 offices in 12 countries and a staff of approximately 2,000. Essence managed over $4B in annualized media spend globally, with clients such as Google, The Financial Times, [4] Target, [1] NBCUniversal, [1] BP, FrieslandCampina, [5] L’Oreal and Tesco Mobile. In 2015 Essence became majority owned by WPP, and a part of GroupM, the WPP media investment management operation. [6]
Essence specialized in strategy, digital marketing, digital creative, media planning and buying, mobile advertising and analytics. It also included a dedicated technology business, 2Sixty Technologies, which developed platforms that underpinned the agency's services to clients as well as building bespoke technologies for clients including Google. [7] 2Sixty was subsequently merged with other GroupM technologies to form Choreograph. [8]
Matt Isaacs was CEO until May 2014 when he became Executive Chair and was succeeded as CEO by Christian Juhl. [9] Andrew Shebbeare was appointed Chair in Jan 2019. Kyoko Matsushita took over from Christian Juhl as CEO from October 2019, when Juhl moved to be CEO of GroupM. [10]
Essence was founded by Matt Isaacs, Andrew Shebbeare and Andy Bonsall who previously worked together at Accucard, a VC/PE backed credit-card company. Accucard was acquired by Lloyds Banking Group where they developed an in-house digital marketing arm called Create Services. [11]
In 2005 they created their own digital agency in London, Essence, with their first client being Carphone Warehouse boss, Sir Charles Dunstone. [12]
In 2006 Essence was hired by Google for a UK media and creative assignment. Today Essence is the digital media agency of record for Google in EMEA, NA and APAC. [13]
Essence has worked for domestic and international brands including L’Oreal, TalkTalk, [14] eBay, [15] Betfair, [16] Expedia, [17] Barclays, [18] YouTube, [19] Method, [20] DoubleDown Interactive, [21] HP, Viber, [22] Visa [23] and Intuit. [24]