Integrated agency Once Upon A Time (OUAT) has today acquired brand activation and shopper marketing agency Toucan, for an undisclosed sum.

Toucan has provided award winning shopper and promotional marketing campaigns for clients since 1991 and joins the OUAT stable as the fifth acquisition after MJ Media in September.

The acquisition of Toucan further supports OUAT’s strategy to offer independent, fully integrated solutions for clients, which include media, advertising, digital, shopper marketing and production.

The directors believe that Toucan’s strategic approach to delivering brand activations and promotional and shopper campaigns will further enhance the group’s offerings to clients. Toucan’s clients include Peperami, Allied Bakeries, Ocean Spray and Unilever.

OUAT CEO Joe Garton comments: “Toucan has a great heritage in strategic shopper marketing and Brand Activation which will enhance our current offering. Increasingly, clients seek a combination of digital (Screen) and shopper (in-store) solutions and Toucan’s skills in these areas are exceptional and will add greatly to fulfill our clients’ demands.”

Toucan Founding Director, Mike Benns, adds: “The culture of OUAT is perfectly aligned to that of Toucan which makes joining the group extremely exciting. We have been working together for some time now so this formalises what already is a great partnership and brings a wide range of marketing services under one roof.”

Toucan is a member of UK marketing industry trade body The Institute of Promotional Marketing and a multi-IPM Award winner.

OUAT was founded in 2014 by Joe Garton and Diane Charlton, who were the founders of Chemistry, one of the largest independent marketing agencies in the UK, which they sold to Publicis Group for £14.5m in 2011.

The picture shows (left to right): Gary Rapps, Founding Director, Toucan; Joe Garton, CEO, OUAT; Rob Ward, Strategy Director, OUAT; Mike Benns, Founding Director, Toucan.

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Inflexion Private Equity has announced that funds managed by Inflexion have completed the buyout of Virgin Experience Days, the UK’s leading experiences business.

Virgin Experience Days offers curated experiences to consumers and corporates, from flying Spitfires to short luxury breaks, selling over 750,000 experiences annually. A high-growth business, revenue has doubled to £50m in three years, driven by a seamless tech-enabled customer experience and the ongoing consumer shift to sharing experiences over tangible goods.

Virgin Experience Days operates B2C and B2B divisions. Virgin Incentives, the B2B division, offers experience days for employee rewards and recognition programmes, with clients such as Barclaycard and Samsung.

As part of the buyout, Inflexion introduced leisure sector expert, Simon McMurtrie, as Chairman and the highly experienced Commercial Director, Matthew Briggs. Both will work alongside CEO Paul O’Brien who has led the business for over a decade. Inflexion will work closely with this team to create long-term sustainable growth.

Capitalising on our international reach, Inflexion will help accelerate sales into new markets with growing demand for personalised experiences, and support the re-launch of Virgin Incentives in the multi-billion-pound employee rewards and recognition market. Inflexion’s digital expertise will also help advance the company’s digital marketing strategy.

Paul O’Brien, CEO, Virgin Experience Days, says: “It’s been a pleasure leading Virgin Experience Days over the last 12 years, and I am proud of the successful business it is today. Inflexion shares our vision for growth, backed by their digital expertise and international reach; we look forward to a prosperous partnership.”

Tim Smallbone, Head of Enterprise, Inflexion, adds: “Virgin Experience Days is a globally recognised and respected brand with international growth potential. We’re delighted to back an ambitious management team in a sector where Inflexion has a strong track record, with businesses such as On the Beach, Reed & Mackay and Reward Gateway. This is the third investment this year for our Enterprise Fund that partners with high-growth businesses in the lower mid-market.”

The Inflexion deal team comprised of Tim Smallbone, Tom Pemberton, Shiva Tiwari and Robin Senivassen. Smallbone and Tiwari have joined the Virgin Experiences board on completion.

Inflexion is an award-winning UK mid-market private equity firm, investing equity of £10m to £150m in high growth, entrepreneurial businesses with ambitious management teams and working in partnership with them to accelerate growth. A mid-market specialist with bespoke teams and dedicated capital, Inflexion backs majority or minority investments in the lower mid-market, mid-market buyouts and provides minority solutions for larger mid-market companies through its dedicated Partnership Capital offering.

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Love2shop Business Services, the corporate division of Park Group plc, has acquired brand engagement specialists Fisher Moy International Limited in an all-cash deal for an undisclosed sum.

Chris Hartley, Director of Love2shop Business Services, says: “The synergy between the two businesses made this acquisition an easy decision all round. With our market-leading consumer reward technology combined with FMI’s strategic alliances with its client base, we can now offer an end-to-end engagement boosting service for any business that wants to improve its relationship with customers and employees.”

John Fisher, Managing Director, FMI Ltd., adds: “Love2shop is one of our most respected clients. They had previously asked us to devise an online engagement platform for their many corporate clients. After a few months, it became apparent that we could offer their clients a much broader engagement service than the provision of rewards alone, so a closer type of cooperation was discussed.”

FMI will remain based in Chilton, Buckinghamshire and will initially continue to operate under the existing brand to spearhead Love2shop’s engagement services expansion and act as a local base for clients in London and the Thames Valley.

Love2shop is the UK’s leading multi-retailer gift voucher and prepaid gift card, accepted at over 150 major retailers with more than 20,000 stores UK wide.  Love2shop schemes are tailored to individual customer needs, principally recognising and rewarding a range of consumer behaviors.  These include customer loyalty and acquisition, referral generation, market research and sales promotions, as well as staff motivation and reward.

Fisher Moy International Limited (FMI) is a strategic brand engagement consultancy with more than 30 years’ experience working with major blue-chip clients.

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Leading employee and customer engagement solutions company Grass Roots is being bought by Blackhawk Network Holdings, Inc., a leading prepaid and payments global company based in California.

The acquisition will allow Grass Roots to offer new products and capabilities to its current clients, as well as take advantage of Blackhawk’s global network to broaden Grass Roots’ international reach.

Blackhawk plans to use the acquisition to extend its global footprint by offering global reward and incentive products to its clients through Grass Roots’ leading employee and customer engagement solutions. The deal also adds an important element to Blackhawk’s portfolio by allowing Blackhawk to tap into Grass Roots’ expertise in meetings and events management.

“We are really excited about the opportunities this partnership brings to Grass Roots,” said Richard Bandell, CEO of Grass Roots. “Joining Blackhawk opens up significant growth opportunities for Grass Roots, transforming us into a leading global business and allowing us to inspire more people worldwide. Together, the two companies will have increased scale and scope, and we will bring those benefits to our clients and partners.”

“The acquisition of Grass Roots complements the existing client portfolio of Blackhawk’s incentives business, and enhances solutions for customers requiring global reward and incentive platforms and products,” said Bill Tauscher, executive chairman of Blackhawk. “We will also offer new products and capabilities to Grass Roots’ clients.”

“The Grass Roots team has extensive industry experience and a proven track record of success in the consumer and employee engagement markets. We are thrilled to welcome them and over 2,000 managed service clients to the Blackhawk family,” added Talbott Roche, CEO and president of Blackhawk.

Grass Roots has been an affiliate of WPP for a number of years. It will now operate as a subsidiary of Blackhawk. Matthew Howe and Jonathan Kenny, co-managing directors of Blackhawk’s UK-based Europe operations, will lead the European operations of Grass Roots. Stewart Rigby, managing director, Blackhawk Asia Pacific, will lead the Asia-Pacific operations of Grass Roots.

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OmniServ, which provides a range of services to airports, airlines and travel retail operators, has acquired Attitude Events, a provider of travel retail and customer service specialists in airports.

Attitude Events will become part of OmniServ’s Blackjack Promotions division, which focuses on airport retail and experiential marketing within the travel space. The move strengthens Blackjack’s travel retail presence and offering in airports across Europe.

Founded in 1999, Attitude Events delivers staffing solutions to the travel retail platform. The business currently works with clients including World Duty Free Group/Dufry, William Grants & Sons and Coty Prestige.

The news comes on the back of a hugely successful year 2015 which included the expansion of OmniServ and Blackjack into the Middle East. The company now has operations in Dubai Airport, Sharjah and Abu Dhabi. In addition, the Airport Promotion Agencies (APA) network, of which Blackjack is a founding partner, has also been extended into new countries.

Sally Alington, Managing Director of Blackjack Promotions, says: “We are a dynamic and ambitious business, constantly focused on growth and expansion by providing elevated service levels and innovation for our clients. Over the last 12 months, we have seen consolidation in our industry with the acquisitions of P&G by Coty [Coty bought P&G’s global salon professional hair care and colour, retail hair colour, cosmetics and fine fragrance businesses, along with selected hair styling brands]  and World Duty Free Group by Dufry.”

Alington adds: “The travel retail industry is witnessing change and we must be able to match the demands of these bigger global clients by also consolidating, expanding and being able to offer solutions to them whenever and wherever they need. We are delighted to welcome the Attitude team to become part of this exciting journey.”

As a leading airport service contractor in the UK, serving over 15 airports, the acquisition strengthens OmniServ and Blackjack’s positions in Heathrow, Gatwick, Stansted, Manchester, Edinburgh and Glasgow airports.

Blackjack Promotions is the UK’s leading provider of specialist staffing solutions for travel retail and airport-related staffing (see picture) and a major provider of experiential solutions for specialist travel retail. Its has four core service: travel retail; customer service; experiential; and logistics. It also works closely with agency partners and media owners.

The company was founded in 1995 and acquired by OmniServ Limited, the European division of Air Serv Corporation in 2013.

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