Publicis Groupe Acquires Relevant24

Publicis Groupe announced today the acquisition of Relevant24 (R24), a leader in creating original, multi-media branded content in real-time to help make brands relevant every day. 

Based in Boston, MA with an office in Venice, CA, R24’s 23-person staff provides expertise in leveraging real-time consumer insights with a daily publisher process for original content creation. The team does so with a war room model comprised of experts who identify trends daily, bring forward what’s relevant, and apply judgment and sensibility to create original multi-media branded content as insights, events, trends and conversations unfold.

As $44B a year is spent on content marketing, according to the Custom Content Council, R24’s successful approach to results-driven, high-quality original content at the speed of relevancy has provided clients with 5x the average reach in earned media, more than doubling engagement across all social channels.

R24 will be aligned with Starcom MediaVest Group (SMG) and immediately plugged in as the real-time content infrastructure to the current SMG content solutions businesses. This will boost SMG’s content creation capability; expand CONTENT@SCALE, SMG’s proprietary next generation platform that enables marketers to automate and distribute quality content from many of the world’s best publishers in real-time; grow SMG’s paid social business; and provide a formidable end-to-end offering in real-time, relevant brand storytelling across all consumer channels.

R24 Founders, CEO Marc Gallucci and President Lane Murphy, will maintain their respective roles and Gallucci will join SMG’s Global Leadership Council. R24 will retain its name, management team and structure and operate as a standalone unit within Starcom MediaVest Group.

Marc Gallucci, CEO of R24, said: “Our mission is to close the relevancy gap for brands. Consumers are giving valuable insights daily and we’re making this data actionable through striking a balance of speed and quality along with unearthing the right data each day. We are excited to bring our expertise to SMG and its clients.”

Laura Desmond, CEO of Starcom MediaVest Group, said: “This move enables SMG to gain new advantages, extend our leadership and activate against our future in content solutions. The landscape offers huge opportunity to capture data in real time and create a new paradigm in the strategic process, ensuring that messaging and distribution comes together in a way that is live, personalized, agile and tech-enabled.”