WPP, IMG Announce Global Licensing Collaboration

The world's largest advertising company, WPP Group, and IMG have teamed up for a worldwide collaboration that the parties hope will create more licensing and merchandising opportunities for WPP's roster of consumer brand clients. WPP and IMG will establish a joint team and share resources to offer and provide licensing services to clients across all of WPP’s portfolio of agencies.

"More than ever, licensing is emerging as one of the new creative ways of developing brands and sales. It is a capability we see as increasingly important to our clients," Martin Sorrell, CEO of WPP, said. "We wanted to offer this important discipline in a global execution and with the market leader - that is IMG. In our view, there could be no better partner to help us achieve our goals in this area."

“WPP’s agencies have an impressive roster of clients coupled with the brand knowledge and consumer insights that come from years of experience working with them," George Pyne, President of IMG’s Sports and Entertainment Group, added. "We believe that our global execution capability and specialized expertise in the licensing business coupled with their deep-rooted knowledge and relationships with certain client companies can yield some very beneficial and successful partnerships. This is a really natural collaboration that was waiting to happen.” #newstag #newstag