The delivery company DoorDash this February did not buy an ad in the Super Bowl LX broadcast. Instead, it released the Beef 101 campaign on social media, with rapper 50 Cent as an internet troublemaker. According to Fortune, the Atlanta agency Get Engaged worked on it, and DoorDash is among its clients. Since the end of September, the team that made the campaign has belonged to the Madrid-based group SAMY. With it, the group also acquired the client the campaign was made for.
SAMY paid for the agency in cash and shares. Get Engaged co-founder Cam Fordham and an unnamed source at Adweek both put the value of the deal in the low hundreds of millions of dollars. All three founders are staying at the company. One of them, Alex Dermer, will run it as chief executive, and according to him the founders will keep a significant stake in the combined company.
Since its founding in 2016, Get Engaged has grown to more than a hundred employees in Atlanta, New York, Nashville and Los Angeles. According to Fordham, its revenue is growing 40% year on year. Co-founder Ben Hiott told Fortune that they were not looking for anyone to come in and fix what they had built.
The Czech Lafluence, which in October 2023 bought the agency WeDigital, went about it differently. It took over its team and, according to CzechCrunch, its network of clients. But founder Andrea Hurychová was due, in the following months, to hand over leadership to Martin Kyncl, who until then had run the agency part of Lafluence. The combined companies described themselves, according to the same site, as the largest influencer-focused marketing company in Czechia.
One group from Madrid, three local teams
Madrid-based SAMY now employs over 1,200 people. The investment firm Bridgepoint entered as a minority partner and last year became its majority owner. In April of that year, SAMY, backed by Bridgepoint, bought the German agency Intermate, with 250 employees in Berlin, Hamburg and Cologne.
Half a year later, SAMY's European network grew by the Amsterdam agency team5pm and with it by the Netherlands, Sweden and Poland. A brand that hires Intermate in Berlin, team5pm in Amsterdam and Get Engaged in Atlanta works with three local teams. Above them all stands one group from Madrid.
The road to a billion runs through the United States
SAMY chief executive Juan Andrés Elhazaz called the United States the group's main growth target. Co-founder Marta Nicolás said last year in an interview with Reason Why that her main goal is to expand in the United States. SAMY already operates there, for example in Miami and New York, she said, but it still has to consolidate its position and make sure its brand is relevant.
Patricia Ratia, who co-founded SAMY, said in the same interview that the group wants to reach a valuation of one billion dollars and that to do so it must grow three to five times within three to five years.
According to Reason Why, the purchase of Get Engaged fits both routes by which SAMY wants to achieve such growth, namely the United States and acquisitions. With the Atlanta agency, the group gained an American base whose clients, alongside DoorDash, also include the chain Raising Cane’s.
Fordham explains in Adweek that his people understand culture and how content spreads online, and can judge what will work and what will flop. When they combine that instinct with SAMY's data, technology and global reach, he says, they will have more ways to succeed for clients.
Fordham, Dermer and Hiott are staying in the group for now. Whether SAMY bought people in Atlanta as well, or mainly their clients, depends on how long they stay.
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