Sir Martin Sorrell’s new venture, S4 Capital, has announced it has acquired two more acquisitions.
MediaMonks has purchased Caramel Pictures (“Caramel”), one of the world’s leading food and liquids film studio for an undisclosed cash sum.
Based in Amsterdam,, Caramel adds award-winning directors, a specialist crew, studio, robotic equipment and over 25 years of craft in high-end digital photography and film for FMCG brands. The purchase also broadens MediaMonks’ Content Studio’s capabilities, as clients increasingly explore in-house, co-location and fit-for-format creative content models.
Founded in 1977 by Will van der Vlugt, Caramel’s brand clients include Heineken, KFC, KitKat, Lays, Magnum, and Senseo. In addition, Caramel works with FMCG companies such as the Coca-Cola Company, Danone, Nestlé and Unilever.
In addition, MightyHive has combined with ProgMedia, a Brazilian programmatic consultancy founded two years ago by ex-Google employees, Bruno Rebouças and Natalia Fernandes.
ProgMedia will become MightyHive’s base in Latin America, to capture the major market opportunity in the world’s fourth largest market and extend MightyHive’s capabilities into the Latin American region. ProgMedia’s clients include iFood, a leading online food delivery service throughout Latin America and Serasa Consumidor, the Experian-owned Brazilian credit research firm. ProgMedia has 27 people and provides flexible service offerings to help marketers and agencies in Latin America navigate the programmatic ecosystem.
Consideration for ProgMedia will be half cash and half in S4 Capital Ordinary Shares, which will have a two-year restriction on sale. A completion payment will be made based on the audited accounts for 2018 and a further payment will be made based on achieving the targeted earnings before interest, taxation, depreciation and amortisation (EBITDA) for 2019, as soon as the audited accounts are available, probably around March 2020.
These two initiatives are in line with S4 Capital’s recently announced strategic imperatives of broadening and deepening its functional and geographic capabilities in first party data, digital content and programmatic.
Sorrell said of the acquisitions: “Client interest in our purely digital, first party data, always-on 24/7 programmatic model is frenetic. These two further strategic moves in the premium quality, digital content area and programmatic in Latam deepen and broaden that powerfully attractive offer.”
