Engine Group boosts global digital network by buying Shanghai agency FlipScript
Peter Scott’s Engine Group is buying Shanghai-based digital and social agency FlipScript to create a global digital network with US-based deep Focus and London’s Jam.
FlipScript employs 52 people and works for clients including Tourism Australia, Bally, Crocs and Starbucks.
The agency was founded in 2008 by Alpha Xu and Wong Kiang Fong who will stay with the business. Initially the agency will be known as Deep Focus/FlipScript. Engine’s digital network now numbers 270 people under Alex Balfour who joined recently after working as head of new media on the London 2012 Olympics.
The Chinese founders say: “Having successfully grown our business and developed our client list in China now was the logical time to partner with a like-minded digital company to spearhead the next phase of our growth.”
Engine, which claims to be the biggest privately-own communications group in the UK, has expanded cautiously outside its home territory; preferring to concentrate on digital (which it says now accounts for 60 pe rcent of its revenues across all the areas in which it operates) rather than buying traditional advertising businesses.