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Renaissance PR was acquired by 1SP Agency last week. We checked in with Stefano Petrullo, founder and CEO of Renaissance PR and Torsten Oppermann, founder and CEO of 1SP Agency, to ask some questions about the acquisition, and what it’ll mean for their newly combined companies going forward.
You’ve been around since 2015 – why be acquired now?
Stefano Petrullo: We have been growing stronger and stronger for the last 9 years and we have expanded to a point where we had to decide if we wanted to scale up ourselves, or become a part of a wider group, which would allow us to offer more services and regions versus retaining our current offering. When I asked myself this question, I decided that the latter would be the better option to maintain our core values while growing at the same time and it would allow us to benefit from a larger team and a vast range of expertise. We are now one of 10 different companies all maintaining their own identity and individuality under the 1SP Agency umbrella, which I believe is the best of both worlds.
You mentioned that you were going to ‘join the 1SP family’ in the press release announcing the acquisition – how autonomous will Renaissance PR be going forward?
Stefano Petrullo: The team is the same. I am the same. I believe we have a grand vision on what we want to achieve. I will not see a massive change in the day by day which is one of the reasons for the acquisition. For our clients, we have essentially more services and regions to offer but also a wider ambition to help as a group on the whole consumer journey across all the touchpoints / channels
What does being acquired allow Renaissance to do that it couldn’t do before?
Stefano Petrullo: It is connected to the customer journey. Our core business of traditional PR, influencer management and corporate communications is the same. But all the rest from traditional marketing, international creator campaigns, retail and POS services, digital storefront design to event management, design and scale is changed, and with people on the ground in all major locations in Europe, which is a big difference also for our traditional work.
Will there be any organizational changes at Renaissance following the acquisition?
Stefano Petrullo: Renaissance has always been the home of humble, ambitious and expert people in the field of gaming and comms. This remains and will continue to be one of our strong USPs. I do not oversee major overhaul, apart from hopefully further growth at the right time, continuing to follow the market evolution across our core disciplines of PR, influencer and corporate comms.
Why is 1SP Agency interested in the UK market?
Torsten Oppermann: Our vision is to offer the best services for clients from gaming, consumer electronics and tech across all of EMEA and to cover all touchpoints of the customer journey from awareness (PR, socials, creator and influencer marketing) to retail and e-tail services, supported by tech solutions to retain customers such as our One2Five consumer review platform, and supported by AR/VR-solutions. All to help clients get more awareness and sell more.
In order to match clients’ needs we needed to be a one stop solution for all these markets. The UK market plays a big role in our strategy and Renaissance PR is already our second company in the UK, after we took Studio CO2 in the UK on board, which is run by ex-SEGA, ex-Hasbro industry veteran Steve Cross.
Why has 1SP Agency decided to acquire Renaissance, rather than set up shop here from scratch?
Torsten Oppermann: We do not believe that we can achieve our goal(s) by just putting a couple of people on the ground. Our strategy is to integrate successful specialists agencies into our family to grow inorganically.
What does Renaissance PR bring to the 1SP family?
Torsten Oppermann: First of all, Stefano is a great guy to work with. I have known him for 30 years. His team rocks and is passionate about what they do, and as 1SP stands for “one shared passion”, that alone ticks a huge box. We needed a comms agency in the UK, somebody that understands gaming well, and is connected within the industry, with a great fit into our comms team from MSM.digital in Hamburg. Both teams have known each other for years and have already worked together, so it was quite a logical step to elevate this relationship to the next level.
You’ve said in the past that you want to create a ‘superagency’, what does that mean to you?
Torsten Oppermann: That is an important question. There are a bunch of private equity financed agency groups out there (in the more traditional ad agency space), put together by finance people, purely based on adding ebit together to create a larger business.
We are building this “Supergency” that is focused on games, consumer electronics and tech, as my co-founder Markus Oeller and I are passionate about the market we are in. We are the driver of our buy-and-build strategies, while having an amazing private equity partner as an enabler.
All of our 300+ staff are passionate about gaming / gadgets / tech et al and helping clients as a one stop shop in all key countries is what drives each and everyone in the team.
We aim to offer solutions in any of the key regions to help our clients gain more awareness and thus more business. In one country, or all over Europe / EMEA, with one point of contact or a team of different account managers.
If you look into what happened in the last three to four years, more and more marketing decisions have been made globally, or at least EMEA-wide. That is where we can come in. We help to execute for our clients in around 20+ languages in all key markets already.
