Carat Interactive changes its name today to Carat Fusion, merging its digital practice and Carat Direct sibling under one roof.
The newly named shop's Fusion Planning approach, which breaks the silos among consumer insights, creative, media and emerging technologies, already has produced extra billings of $70 million in the past two months. All told, the agency's billings have crossed $320 million.
“Really what we're talking about is the intersection of brand and response,” said Toby Gabriner, president of Carat Fusion.
The agency remains part of Isobar, a digital marketing subsidiary of media services giant Aegis. Carat Fusion will operate from Carat Interactive's headquarters in San Francisco, with supporting offices in New York, Los Angeles, Chicago and Boston. Clients include Gateway, Jenny Craig, Adidas, Kodak, AOL and RadioShack.
Carat Fusion's Fusion Planning philosophy will dominate all its work, looking at all marketing activities holistically from a measuring perspective. The new tack was born of a market need.
“Advertisers are scrambling to figure out how to handle the media fragmentation and the heavy-duty fragmentation of the audiences,” Gabriner said.
“The second thing we're seeing is that if an agency can't deliver on that and break through the clutter, then advertisers are not as loyal as before,” he said. “You can see this by the number of [agency] reviews going on. And third is the real need for ROI as the consumer is in control.”
Mickey Alam Khan covers Internet marketing campaigns and e-commerce, agency news as well as circulation for DM News and DMNews.com. To keep up with the latest developments in these areas, subscribe to our daily and weekly e-mail newsletters by visiting www.dmnews.com/newsletters
