Now Accenture buys California’s Wire Stone as it assembles giant global creative department

Accenture Interactive has bought California based Wire Stone, a design and marketing agency employing 200 people in ten offices with clients including Microsoft, HP and Motorola.

Accenture Interactive’s Glen Hartman says: “Great experiences begin with great stories. Wire Stone’s proven ability to tell engaging stories by blending creativity and technology, together with Accenture’s scale and business transformation expertise, is a unique and powerful combination.”

This is Accenture Interactive’s 15th agency buy in the last five years. Most have been design-based although recently it’s bought the UK’s full service Karmarama, Australia’s The Monkeys (which also includes a design operation) and Germany’s SinnerSchrader digital agency, the biggest buy to date.

Adweek reminds us that with projected revenues of $6bn this year Accenture Interactive (let’s call it AI although that’s a bit misleading) now ranks above Havas, or would do if it was a holding a company, which it isn’t.

AI is big though and now operates as much as the marketing agency of the giant consultancy as a digital specialist (the two are often the same, of course). Its emphasis on creative design companies suggests that, for the most part, it sees its serried ranks of consultants as the equivalent of agency account management and planning people. What it’s mostly buying are diverse and diffuse elements of a giant creative department.

This might change, of course, if one of the holding company big agency networks came on the market.