WE Communications announced its acquisition of leading content marketing agency, Codeword. This acquisition further accelerates WE’s content, digital, social and editorial capabilities for clients in North America.
Moving forward, Codeword will be known as WE Codeword and operate as a separate entity. WE Codeword will maintain its own client portfolio and continue to partner with WE on new business and joint client opportunities. The current leadership of Mike Barash, Jeff Lind, Michael McKloskey and Kyle Monson will continue to drive the business forward, working in partnership with WE leaders through a joint board headed by WE North America President Kass Sells.
“Like us, Codeword has a client-first focus, is deeply connected to technology, driven by purpose and acts as a leader in the evolving influence landscape,” said Melissa Waggener Zorkin, CEO of WE. “While much of the news on M&A in our industry over the last year has been about holding companies consolidating their assets, we are proud that this move represents growth and diversification for both of our independent, people-focused, high-performing, financially strong firms.”
With offices in New York, San Francisco and Salt Lake City, WE Codeword has differentiated itself through a focus on editorial and content, while building out services in PR, social media, strategy and analytics. Most of the team has backgrounds in journalism, media and publishing.
“We’ve been fans of Melissa and WE for a long time, and many of us have worked with WE in our past lives as journalists,” said Kyle Monson, WE Codeword partner. “We’re so excited for this next phase. We work hard to stay at the forefront of our industry, and partnering with WE gives us a bigger platform to do the kind of work we love to do for our clients—telling creative, relevant stories that move people to action.”
WE Codeword will round out WE’s current offering to provide clients with a robust platform of communications and content capabilities across the media ecosystem. WE client services span traditional media influencer relations to creative, content, social and editorial through to digital execution, measurement and analytics.
The acquisition is further proof of WE’s momentum in North America, including double-digit growth in the region and onboarding of new clients like McDonalds, iRobot, Brother and Tabula Rasa, among others.
“Joining forces just makes sense—for our world-class clients, and for our people,” said Sells. “We’re already serving clients and winning new business together. And, we recognize great opportunity in how our combined talent and skill sets can create positive change in the marketing and communications landscape.”
