Both Sand People and Blue Creative Group will retain their respective brand names and management.
In today’s fragmented marketing-communications environment, many companies are beginning to rethink the strategy of employing multiple marketing agencies for their branding requirements. The prospect of developing deeper relationships with a singular agency that truly understands the client’s strategy and objectives across all communications channels is recognized as a key element to a company’s success. By leveraging expertise from multiple departments within its structure on behalf of a client, a full-service agency is able to deliver added value, high-quality work, and superior, bespoke client service.
This overall strategy was recognized by the principals of both Blue Creative Group and Sand People. Together, the companies have now completed a transaction to merge the two entities into a single source solution marketing agency – having offices in the US and Europe, serving clients worldwide in the yachting, luxury lifestyle, sustainable energy, finance, manufacturing, and technology markets.
The combined company offers clients a full set of custom services including media relations, media buying, content development, event development and management, graphic design and creative services, SEO, website development, full video production, market research, social-media management, strategic planning, and brand development.
Both Sand People and Blue Creative Group will retain their respective brand names and management, yet will transition to a unified operational structure to leverage opportunities and expertise. Furthermore, the combined entity will benefit from additional relationships and partnerships as part of the Fresnel Companies’ portfolio.
Additional graphic and website updates are underway to communicate that the two entities can serve clients as a singular, cohesive company.
“With Sand People I always had the objective of building up a team and a company with a clear, strong international pedigree. This partnership joins together two powerhouse teams into one real, solid global organization,” says Gianluca Poerio, founder of Sand People. “The leverage we’ve already seen with shared clients is just a taste of what we can do, and there’s plenty of potential to enhance and maximize clients’ promotions, deliver them budget efficiency and bandwidth with the unified structure.”
As part of the transaction, Blue Creative Group president and partner George Sass Jr. has joined the Board of Directors of the Switzerland-based Sand People. “This merger will significantly strengthen the capabilities of the combined company, further grow and diversify its service offerings, and position the company for continued long-term growth,” says Sass. “I’ve had the pleasure of working directly with Sand People’s incredible team and Gianluca for almost two decades, first as an editor and then as a client. The level of creativity, energy, and dedication to their clients’ success is deeply ingrained within the Sand People culture. We continued to collaborate together with several clients since Blue was founded in 2019, making the merger a seamless process, and our team is excited to learn from and collaborate with Sand People’s team.”
No personnel changes are planned as a result of the transaction, and a fully developed long-term vision around this merger will invest in current personnel to facilitate the growth and success. This includes expanding management roles for current team members. In anticipation of the merger, Blue Creative has added marine industry veteran Bob Bauer to its management team to oversee client success. Additional content creation specialists are also being added to the team.
The Fresnel Companies and Fresnel Growth Capital, led by partner Thomas Thies, advised Blue Creative Group and facilitated the transaction between the two companies.
