Stagwell Inc. (Stagwell) conducts its business through its networks, which provide marketing and business solutions that realize the potential of combining data and creativity.
Stagwell’s strategy is to build, grow, and acquire market-leading businesses that deliver the modern suite of services that marketers need to thrive in a rapidly evolving business environment.
Stagwell is the challenger network built to transform marketing. Stagwell delivers scaled creative performance for some of the w...
Stagwell Inc. (Stagwell) conducts its business through its networks, which provide marketing and business solutions that realize the potential of combining data and creativity.
Stagwell’s strategy is to build, grow, and acquire market-leading businesses that deliver the modern suite of services that marketers need to thrive in a rapidly evolving business environment.
Stagwell is the challenger network built to transform marketing. Stagwell delivers scaled creative performance for some of the world’s most ambitious brands, connecting culture-moving creativity with leading-edge technology to harmonize the art and science of marketing. Led by entrepreneurs, the company’s specialists in over 40 countries are unified under a single purpose: to drive effectiveness and improve business results for its more than 4,500 clients as of December 31, 2024.
Stagwell offers the capabilities marketers need in the digital age: Digital Transformation, Performance Media & Data, Consumer Insights & Strategy, Creativity & Communications, and ‘software as a service’ (‘SaaS’) and ‘data as a service’ (‘DaaS’) technology tools within the Stagwell Marketing Cloud Group. Additionally, the Stagwell Marketing Cloud, the company’s proprietary suite of SaaS and DaaS technology solutions, is designed for modern marketers and includes applications across the marketing value chain—research and insights, communications technology, media studios, and advanced media platforms (including augmented reality (‘AR’)). Stagwell provides a suite of marketing services that serve marketers’ needs, as well as self-service technology-driven solutions for in-house marketers. Through the Stagwell Marketing Cloud, Stagwell is investing in the frontiers of marketing, with technology products that fuel artificial intelligence (‘AI’) for content creation, ‘instant’ market research, and for communications professionals, and AR experiences for stadium goers and live events. This is a key part of the future strategy for the company.
Stagwell has grown through a combination of organic growth and investment. Beginning with a single company in 2015, Stagwell focused on the fastest-growing area of marketing: digital services. Between 2015 and 2021, it acquired companies, including digital transformation and digital media groups, such as Code and Theory and ForwardPMX.
Stagwell’s unified corporate team is the foundation of a powerful value creation platform focused on scaling the company’s portfolio of marketing services firms, which it refers to as ‘Brands,’ and driving continual network evolution. The company plans to continue investing in its core digital platforms, developing its suite of digital products in the Stagwell Marketing Cloud, increasing its technology leadership through investment and innovation, and further expanding its international footprint both organically and via its Global Affiliate Network to deliver value for its clients, employees, and shareholders.
As AI, in particular, drives cross-sector transformation, the company is helping clients build applications around AI, delivering solutions that expand generative and content capabilities, and reimagining how AI can transform consumer and digital experiences.
Competition
Stagwell’s Brands compete for business and talent with the operating subsidiaries of large global holding companies, such as Omnicom Group Inc., Interpublic Group of Companies, Inc., WPP plc, Publicis Groupe SA, Dentsu Inc., and Havas SA, as well as with numerous independent agencies that operate in multiple markets. The company’s Brands also face competition from consultancies, such as Accenture and Deloitte, tech platforms, media companies, and other services firms that offer related services.
Offering
Principal Capabilities
Stagwell’s Brands provide differentiated, digital-first marketing and related services to a diverse client base across many industries.
The company’s principal capabilities fall into five categories: Stagwell Marketing Cloud Group, Digital Transformation, Performance Media & Data, Consumer Insights & Strategy, and Creativity & Communications. Taken together, these capabilities provide an integrated suite of marketing services for its blue-chip customer base.
The company groups its Brands into these principal capability categories based on the source of most of their revenue. The company also classifies Digital Transformation, Performance Media & Data, Consumer Insights & Strategy, and Stagwell Marketing Cloud Group as ‘Digital,’ though Brands categorized as Creativity & Communications also generate a significant portion of revenue from creativity and content delivered on digital channels, and some agencies, such as 72andSunny and Anomaly, do meaningful amounts of digital work that fluctuate as a percentage of revenue. The company plans to continue to invest in its core digital platforms, as well as emerging technologies, to effectively support marketing transformation for its clients.
Stagwell Marketing Cloud Group: The company develops proprietary, in-house software and related technology products, including AI-enabled communications, research, and media technology, cookie-less data platforms for advanced targeting and activation, software tools for e-commerce applications, specialty media solutions in the fast-growing augmented reality space, and innovative applications of text messaging for consumer engagement, which it licenses to clients using subscription-based SaaS and DaaS models.
Digital Transformation: The company builds digital services and products for clients. It designs and builds digital platforms and experiences that support the delivery of content, commerce, services, and sales. The company creates websites, mobile applications, back-end systems, content and data management systems, and other digital environments enabling clients to engage with consumers across the digital ecosystem. It steers significant digital transformations for businesses, blending data, analytics & research, and organizational consulting to drive impact with technology. The company designs and implements technology and data strategies to support digital services needed for its clients. It also implements technology and strategies for utilizing digital channels to mobilize and raise funds from proponents and constituents to support political candidates, non-profit groups, and issue organizations in the public arena. As businesses across sectors are likely to grapple with the impact of AI, the company implements AI to enhance operations for its clients, more efficient marketing, and new engagement methods with consumers.
Performance Media & Data: The company develops omnichannel media strategies and provides coordinated execution for the placement of advertisements across the media funnel, including digital channels, performance marketing, and analog placements globally. Unlike legacy holding companies that own large amounts of television inventory and therefore must sell it, Stagwell takes a media-agnostic approach leveraging digital technologies, AI-powered targeting, and media in addition to analog advertising. The company’s media services include media solutions, such as audience analysis, and media buying and planning, ranging across the platforms a modern marketer needs to engage consumers.
Consumer Insights & Strategy: The company performs large-scale online surveys, specialized research, and data analytics across the consumer journey to provide strategic insights and guidance that inform business content, product, communications, and media strategies for many of the world’s largest companies, including numerous Fortune 100 clients. It has differentiated specializations in brand and corporate reputation tracking, theatrical and streaming content and strategy, and technology product design and marketing. The company’s proprietary AI-powered marketing solutions continue to provide real-time insight into consumer sentiments and brand performance with precision and at scale.
Creativity & Communications: The company develops holistic, creativity-based content strategies and campaigns from concept to execution through to optimization. These services include strategy development, advertising creation, live events, immersive digital experiences, cross-platform engagement, and social media content. The company also provides strategic communications, public relations, and public affairs services, including media relations, thought leadership, investor and financial relations, social media, executive positioning, and visibility. Stagwell is also working with brands to integrate AI into creative processes, streamlining campaign development, and saving on costs.
Network Structure & Reportable Segments
Stagwell maintains a 100% ownership position in substantially all of its Brands, and the remainder are majority owned, with management of the Brands owning the remaining equity. The company generally has rights to increase ownership of non-wholly owned subsidiaries to 100% over a defined period of time.
The Company organizes its Brands into three reportable segments: ‘Integrated Agencies Network,’ ‘Brand Performance Network,’ and the ‘Communications Network.’
The reportable segments are:
The Integrated Agencies Network includes five operating segments: the Anomaly Alliance, Constellation, the Doner Partner Network, Code and Theory Network, and National Research Group. The operating segments offer an array of complementary services spanning its core capabilities of Digital Transformation, Performance Media & Data, Consumer Insights & Strategy, Stagwell Marketing Cloud Group, and Creativity & Communications. The Brands included in the operating segments that comprise the Integrated Agencies Network reportable segment include: Anomaly Alliance (Anomaly, What’s Next Partners), Constellation (72andSunny, Crispin LLC, Colle McVoy, Hunter, Redscout, Team Enterprises, Harris Insights, Movers and Shakers, and Team Epiphany), the Doner Partner Network (Doner, KWT Global, Harris X, Veritas, Doner North, and Yamamoto), Code and Theory Network (Code and Theory, Instrument, Left Field Labs), and National Research Group.
These operating segments share similar characteristics related to the nature of their services, the type of clients, and the methods used to provide services, and the extent to which they may be impacted by global economic and geopolitical risks. In addition, these operating segments may occasionally compete with each other for new business or have business move between them.
The Brand Performance Network (‘BPN’) comprises a single operating segment. BPN includes a unified media and data management structure with omnichannel media placement, creative media consulting, influencer and business-to-business marketing capabilities. BPN’s Brands provide media solutions, such as audience analysis, media planning, and buying across a range of digital and traditional platforms (out-of-home, paid search, social media, lead generation, programmatic, television, broadcast, among others), and includes multichannel Brands Assembly, CPB International, Stagwell Production, Vitro, Forsman & Bodenfors, Goodstuff, Bruce Mau, digital creative & transformation consultancy Gale, B2B specialist Multiview, CX specialists Kenna, and travel media experts Ink.
The Communications Network reportable segment comprises a single operating segment, the company’s specialist network that provides advocacy, strategic corporate communications, investor relations, public relations, online fundraising, and other services to both corporations and political and advocacy organizations, and includes Allison, SKDK, Targeted Victory, and Consulum.
The company combines and discloses operating segments that do not meet the aggregation criteria and includes the elimination of certain intercompany services and revenue, within ‘All Other.’ All Other consists of the company’s ‘software as a service’ (‘SaaS’) and ‘data as a service’ (‘DaaS’) technology tools.
Go-To-Market Strategy
The company’s global go-to-market strategy is key to its objective of providing its clients with a balanced combination of leading-edge technology and creative talent. It goes to market in four main ways: as individual Brands, as networks where collaboration across services is needed, as Stagwell Global when it creates multi-region, Stagwell-wide teams, and as the Stagwell Marketing Cloud, which delivers SaaS and DaaS products for in-house marketers.
In addition to the company’s owned Brands, it maintains a network of go-to-market alliances with like-minded independent brands, tech companies, and marketing services firms in key markets around the world. These partners, which it refers to as Global Affiliates, enable the company to increase its local market reach and qualify for business opportunities that require enhanced capabilities in specific local markets without taking on additional costs. As of December 31, 2024, the company’s Global Affiliate Network included more than 80 affiliates and added coverage for Stagwell in 26 additional countries.
Strategy
The key components of the Stagwell strategy are Digital, Integrated, Global, and Strategic (‘DIGS’).
The company’s strategy is focused on various specific initiatives: Investing in Digital Capabilities, Expanding Addressable Markets, Effective Integration at Scale, and Strategic Value Creation Platform.
Clients
As of December 31, 2024, Stagwell served over 4,500 clients across a wide range of sectors, representing some of the world’s most recognized brands, including: Google, Amazon, Diageo, Nike, Apple, P&G, United Airlines, Salesforce, and more. In many cases, the company serves the same clients in various geographic locations, across multiple disciplines, and through multiple Stagwell Brands. Representation of a client rarely means that Stagwell handles marketing communications for all brands or product lines of the client in every geographical location. In 2024, net revenue from the company’s top 100 clients increased by over 6% year-over-year, as it saw record last twelve months new business and increasing interest in both specific Brand capabilities, as well as cross-Brand, integrated solutions that address multi-discipline client needs.
Sources of Revenue
Stagwell provides a broad range of services to a large base of clients across a wide spectrum of verticals globally. The company has historically been largely focused in North America, where it was founded, as well as the United Kingdom, but has expanded its global footprint to support clients globally and has a presence in more than 40 countries, and an additional 26 countries through the company’s Global Affiliate Network, as of December 31, 2024. The primary source of revenue is from agency arrangements in the form of fees for services performed, commissions, and from performance incentives or bonuses. Stagwell’s Brands have written contracts with many of their clients.