Hasta La Creative!

WPP Digital, the digital investment arm of WPP, has acquired Deeplocal, a move that Nathan Martin, CEO of the 53-person shop, said shows that the holding company “sees the potential in an agency like us and the future of what advertising is going to be.”

Deeplocal, one of Ad Age’s Small Agency winners and Creativity Innovators last year, refers to itself as an “innovation studio,” a fitting description for a shop rooted in engineering that creates inventions for clients. One of its well-known projects was the Netflix switch that lets people order takeout, dim their lights and turn on the service in a single flick. They also created the Netflix socks that pause whatever is on if someone falls asleep while binge-watching. The agency was also behind the Google Pay With a Photo Truck, which highlighted the search functionality of Google Photos by asking people to find a specific photo on their phone in 20 seconds and rewarding them with free food if they could.

“We’re different because we don’t come from an agency background; we come from an engineering, art and technology background,” said Martin. The Pittsburgh-based shop, which launched in 2006, was born out of Carnegie Mellon University, where Martin was working in the school’s art and technology lab, Studio for Creative Inquiry.

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