Reprise Media Lands Microsoft Search Marketing Deal
After its acquisition this past spring, Reprise finds itself teamed with McCann WorldGroup and Microsoft for SEM.
After its acquisition this past spring, Reprise finds itself teamed with McCann WorldGroup and Microsoft for SEM.
Partly owing to its acquisition by Interpublic, Reprise Media has found itself in the position of managing and coordinating search marketing and advertising strategy for Microsoft.
After agreeing to sell to the holding company last April, the SEM firm found itself working under the same umbrella as McCann WorldGroup, Microsoft’s global agency of record, which has created numerous campaigns for the software giant. It’s now won the assignment to manage strategy for several Microsoft initiatives, including “Office, Vista, Zune, and dozens of their other campaigns over the months ahead,” said Peter Hershberg, managing partner for Reprise Media.
“We are now working with WorldGroup and Microsoft to deliver search marketing initiatives across a broad range of initiatives on Microsoft’s behalf,” said Hershberg. “We’ve been talking to WorldGroup and Microsoft since right at the time the acquisition was announced. The first step is understanding what Microsoft’s initiatives look like across the board. Now we’re consolidating what Microsoft is doing in the area of search so it goes through our agency.”
As Reprise solidifies its strategy with its new customer, Hershberg said one of the company’s most important tasks is integrating SEM into Microsoft’s overall marketing strategy.
“The idea is to help Microsoft in the area of search, but more importantly to make sure that search is not treated like it’s a stand alone marketing effort, but as the integration point between all the other offline and online marketing efforts that Microsoft is conducting,” he said. “You’ll see that the search marketing efforts will really compliment everything else that Microsoft is doing in mar-com.”
The win, in addition to bringing Reprise a marquee client, will let the firm demonstrate its capabilities to various other agencies and clients under the IPG umbrella, Hershberg said. “I can’t think of any marketer that has more initiatives going on in so many countries.”