1SP Agency acquires UK communications firm Renaissance PR
It's the latest team to join the expanding marketing and communications agency
German-based marketing and communications agency 1SP has acquired UK PR firm Renaissance PR.
It's part of 1SP's bid to create a 'superagency' covering tech and games. Renaissance joins a family of companies including MSM.digital, Insight, FLZR, Studio CO2 ad CAD-Laif, which together cover retail sales, creator marketing, AR, and other forms of creative services.
Renaissance PR is a UK comms agency run by former Ubisoft PR veteran Stefano Petrullo, and has represented the likes of Curve Games, Futurlab, the Italian games trade body (IIDEA), Kepler, Milestone, Plaion, Private Division, Revolution, Team17, Tencent and many more.
"1SP stands for 'One Shared Passion' and we found that Stefano and his team is one of the most passionate and dedicated groups of professionals within our industry," 1SP Agency CEO Torsten Oppermann tells GamesIndustry.biz.
"They have been a reliable and experienced partner for us for many years already. Secondly, as a group with our ambitions and goals, naturally we also have geographical gaps and service blind spots to fill. Renaissance PR is a perfect fit, as we needed an established and successful comms agency in the UK. They will continue to work very closely with our MSM.digital comms team and both are very excited to get this started."
Renaissance was formed in 2015, and Petrullo tells us that the vision behind the sale is to grow the team's capabilities in a significant way.
"We suddenly have an increased service portfolio not only geographically, but we now can run campaigns from awareness to sales along all touchpoints of the customer journey - together with the help from the other family members of the 1SP Agency," he tells us. "So, more creativity, more resources and a bigger stronger-than-ever Renaissance, with attention to detail and experience that has always been in our DNA."
Petrullo is touching upon the 'superagency' concept that 1SP is trying to build. Oppermann tells us that the group wants to expand further and is on the hunt for talent management agencies in the UK, France and Spain, communications agencies in Southern Europe, retail agencies in UK and Eastern Europe and AR-development agencies.
"We are, and will continue to be, focused on games, consumer electronics and tech," he explains.
"Business planning has surely never been more difficult. The market is changing and evolving constantly"
Torsten Oppermann, 1SP
"We are probably already Europe’s largest specialised 'Superagency' with more than 300 gaming and tech enthusiasts with offices in most major European markets operating in 29 languages and more than 20 different cultures. However, this is just the start, we aim for more."
The acquisition comes at a challenging point in the history of the video games industry, with lay-offs, studio closures and product cancellations due to rising costs and over-investment (amongst other things). This inevitably creates challenges for agencies like 1SP and Renaissance, however, Petrullo and Oppermann are optimistic.
"I have been an agency entrepreneur since 2001 and part of the games industry since the end of the 1980s," Opperman says. "Business planning has surely never been more difficult. The market is changing and evolving constantly, games development has never been more complex and outside factors are unpredictable as ever.
"We are very happy to say that we managed to quadruple our business between 2022 and 2023. It was inorganically, but we grew organically quite well, too. We reached our set targets in a challenging environment in 2023. Our client and team satisfactory ratings came back strong and we are quite ambitious for the upcoming years, while following our 'structure follows business' strategy.
"Gaming, consumer electronics and tech products are still a great market to be in. Personally, I am looking forward to all the upcoming handheld PCs, the new Switch and hopefully a PS5 Pro and new Xbox. There are, and always will be, bumps in the road. When we look back 30 years, when I was part of Sega, launching Mega Drive... it’s amazing to see how far the market has come."
Petrullo adds: "The industry will survive and continue to grow, despite all that has happened recently. It is clear there is money in the industry and capital is getting invested, but in a more curated way. And gamers want new great titles all the time."