Band & Brown and sister agency Brando have merged, with the rebranding in the UK to be mirrored by agencies in the US and Canada. All of the agencies involved are owned by international agency group EDC. The move will see the end of the 20-year-old Band & Brown agency brand.
The UK agency is set to appoint a CEO, to work alongside MD Mandy Sharp and chairman Nick Band. Band said that the agency would have a 'federal approach'.
Sharp added: 'The key thing is we're retaining our local creativity of spirit, but we now have the scale and capacity of offering global comms as clients need it.'
The newly merged Band & Brown and Brando will be renamed Citizen Brando, with PainePR renamed Citizen Paine in the US and Optimum renamed Citizen Optimum in Canada.
The new network will unify more than 200 employees. There are around 40 members of staff in the London office.
The group will also take on three regional partners, which will retain their own names unless handling Citizen-networked business. Citizen SPRG will cover Asia-Pacific, Citizen Creative Crest India and Citizen Jeffrey South America.
The UK agency will be split into three sections: events, media and digital. Gary Berman has been appointed as head of brand experience. EDC also owns Dare, Elvis and Identica.
Meanwhile, Next Fifteen has launched a PR and marketing agency called Animo, which aims to help businesses engage customers through mobile technology.
The agency is headed up by Hugo Brailsford, previously head of mobile and telecoms EMEA at Weber Shandwick.
Animo aims to offer clients a service that is 'founded on deep audience and market insight', which will be 'driven from Animo's custom-developed mobile audience research panel'.
