On March 27, 2023, British advertising group WPP announced the acquisition of Obviously, a technology-led social influencer marketing agency based in New York, with operations in San Francisco and Paris. Founded in 2014, Obviously’s proprietary next-generation tech platform increases campaign efficiency and enables the company to service large-scale complex campaigns for enterprise clients, including Google, Ford, Ulta Beauty, and Amazon. Obviously offers a full stack of end-to-end services, including marketing strategy, influencer identification, content creation, campaign management, and robust reporting and analysis. Its team of nearly 100 people will join WPP subsidiary VMLY&R, a marketing agency with over 13,000 employees, accelerating the WPP agency’s investment in award-winning data and social media work.

Wilson Sonsini represented Obviously in the transaction. The team includes:

M&A
Rich Mullen
Brian Chan
Abby Prithivi
Austin Wolfe
Michael Anthony

Technology Transactions
Chris Paniewski
Vikki Nguyen
Jon-Paul Berexa
Atussa Simon
Stephanie Stark

Privacy
Matt Staples
Daniel Chen
Michael O'Brien
Dantam Le

Tax
Myra Sutanto Shen
Anthony Yanez

Employee Benefits
Sriram Krishnamurthy
Kaitlin Hulbert
Emma Wilcox

Employment
Matt Gorman
Quinn Christie

National Security
Anne Seymour
Kara Millard
Bryan Poellot

Anti-Corruption
Tarek Helou
Seth Cowell

For more information, please see WPP’s press release. Further coverage can be found at Reuters.