Stagwell, formerly The Stagwell Group, is a global marketing and communications group. Founded in 2015 by

Mark Penn Mark J. Penn (born January 15, 1954) is an American businessman, pollster, political strategist, and author. Penn is chairman and chief executive officer of Stagwell, a marketing group created upon the merger of Stagwell Marketing Group—a priv ...

, Stagwell companies operate in four areas: digital transformation and marketing, research and insights, marketing communications, and content and media. In 2020, The Stagwell Group announced plans to merge with its affiliate

MDC Partners MDC Partners Inc. is an advertising and marketing holding company based in New York City. MDC is structured as a partnership model, in which it initially acquires a majority stake in its partner agency, leaving a percentage of ownership with the f ...

. The merger was completed in August 2021.

History

Mark Penn founded The Stagwell Group in 2015. Penn founded The Stagwell Group with a $250 million investment from former Microsoft CEO

Steve Ballmer Steven Anthony Ballmer (; March 24, 1956) is an American business magnate and investor who served as the chief executive officer of Microsoft from 2000 to 2014. He is the current owner of the Los Angeles Clippers of the National Basketball Associ ...

. In 2017, Stagwell acquired Forward3D, Scout and also acquired Observatory from

CAA CAA may refer to: Law * Citizenship (Amendment) Act, 2019 of India ** Citizenship Amendment Act protests, Protests regarding the Citizenship (Amendment) Act * Copyright transfer agreement, Copyright assignment agreement, to transfer copyright to ...

. The company also acquired pilot movie testing assets from Nielsen and combined them with NRG, and acquired mobile research assets from Nielsen to form HarrisX. In 2018, Stagwell acquired Ink and later ReputationDefender. Stagwell also secured a $260 million investment from

AlpInvest Partners AlpInvest Partners is a Dutch private equity asset manager with over $47 billion of assets under management as of September 30, 2017. The firm invests on behalf of a broad range of institutional investors from North America, Asia, Europe, South ...

. In 2020, Stagwell acquired Seward Square Strategies as part of SKDK, as well as Headliner Labs as part of ForwardPMK. In August 2021, following the merger of The Stagwell Group with MDC Partners, Stagwell formed Stagwell Media Network, a group of multichannel agencies. In July 2022, Stagwell acquired Apollo Program, an AI-powered SaaS platform.

Merger with MDC Partners

MDC Partners was a publicly-traded advertising and media holding company based in New York. MDC Partners historically acquired majority stakes in partner agencies, and as of 2021 had more than 50 partner firms worldwide. In 2019, Stagwell invested $100 million into MDC Partners. Stagwell CEO Mark Penn was then appointed CEO of MDC Partners. On December 21, 2020, the firms announced their intent to merge. On August 23, 2021, Stagwell announced the completion of the merger and the creation of Stagwell Inc. (NASDAQ: STGW) as the merged entity. Mark Penn will continue as Chairman and CEO of the combined company. The merged company will be headquartered in New York, with significant offices in Washington, DC.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:The Stagwell Group Companies based in Washington, D.C. Marketing companies of the United States Public relations companies of the United States