Gravity Road acquired by You & Mr Jones as content creation and innovation hub
Brandtech group You & Mr Jones today (6 March) announced the acquisition of a majority stake in independent creative agency Gravity Road.
UK indie Gravity Road announces its joining brandtech firm You & Mr Jones / You and Mr Jones
In this acquisition, Gravity Road will become a content and innovation hub for You & Mr Jones, further enhancing the 'brandtech' group’s capabilities worldwide.
Gravity Road, which first opened for business in 2011, has also announced a launch in the US to drive a global expansion of its services and to connect with the group's growing portfolio of investments, which includes Gfycat, Pinterest, Pokemon Go creator Niantic Labs and news outlet Mic.
The agency counts the likes of Mondelez and Sainsbury’s as clients, and has grown revenues by upwards of 40% in 2017.
This announcement follows a period of “prolific activity” from You & Mr Jones. Since last summer the company has invested $20m in social platform Pinterest, alongside a follow-on investment in Niantic, a majority stake in mobile marketing company Mobkoi, and investments in AI-driven conversational leader Automat, AR/VR studio Here Be Dragons and the blockchain media technology company Amino Payments.
Gravity Road claims to be responsible for filming the world’s first ad via Snapchat Spectacles, starring Jamaican Olympian Usain Bolt and comedian Kevin Hart.
David Jones, the founder of You & Mr Jones, said: "We've now made 20 different technology investments and acquired four technology-enabled companies. This latest deal gives us a brilliant innovation and content engine for our technology ecosystem. We’re hugely impressed by the team at Gravity Road and really excited about the future together, especially about launching them into the North American market."
Mark Eaves, a co-founder of Gravity Road, added: “Joining You & Mr Jones was an irresistible opportunity to scale internationally from within a fast-moving, entrepreneurial environment. Gravity Road becomes a creative innovation hub at the heart of a fantastic technology company. They have a very powerful group of AR, VR, AI, data and content companies and we’re excited to work with them. It’s an exciting move in a market that is rapidly transforming.”
Mark Boyd, another co-founder of Gravity Road, said: “Since we launched, we’ve been true to our mission to shape a new creative company that brings together the best of marketing, entertainment and technology. With this deal our clients gain access to the brilliant tech toolkit to allow us to better shape our work, how we work and the effectiveness it has.”
The announcement follows Gravity Road's recent appointments of Sarah Ellis, the former head of marketing strategy at Sainsbury's, and Duncan Snowden of Big Spaceship, to managing director and director of distribution and tech respectively.