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WPP’s Mirum buys majority stake in Germany’s RSK Group
MUMBAI: WPP’s global digital agency Mirum, which is a part of J. Walter Thompson Company, has acquired a majority stake in Germany’s full-service digital marketing agency RSK Group AG.
RSK offers cross-media services including e-Commerce solutions, websites and mobile marketing. Its clients include RCI Banque Germany, Toshiba, 3M and Nestlé.
RSK employs 25 people and is headquartered in Dusseldorf. Post-acquisition, RSK will rebrand as Mirum and will continue to be led by RSK founder and current CEO Christoph Eßer.
RSK’s unaudited revenues for the year ended 31 December, 2014 were approximately EUR 2.3 million, with gross assets at the same date of approximately EUR 1 million.
Germany is WPP’s fourth largest market after the US, UK and Greater China.
MAM
Sameer Nair shares heartfelt note as he exits Applause Entertainment
After nine years building the streamer’s content engine, one of India’s best-known TV men is moving on
MUMBAI: Sameer Nair is out. The chief executive of Applause Entertainment, the content studio backed by Kumar Mangalam Birla’s media empire, has announced his departure after nearly nine years at the helm, closing the chapter on one of Indian entertainment’s more quietly consequential careers.
Nair, who built Applause from the ground up in its current avatar, oversaw a slate that spanned Indian originals and international adaptations, threading together a hub-and-spoke business model that partnered with streaming platforms, broadcasters and production houses alike. The results were uneven, as they always are in content, but the ambition was not.
In a post on LinkedIn, Nair was generous to his outgoing patron. He thanked Birla for being an “inspirational boss and a great patron of the arts,” and signed off with a cheerful “Au Revoir” and a promise to remain Applause’s biggest cheerleader. Whether that sentiment survives the next chapter remains to be seen.
No successor has been named. Applause Entertainment did not immediately comment.
Nair built the machine. Now someone else has to run it — and in a streaming market that is simultaneously consolidating and convulsing, that is no small ask.
