WPP’s VML Digital Agency Is Buying Another Shop in China
Digital marketing agency VML is acquiring 10-year-old Chinese social media agency Teein, its second purchase in China in less than a year.
With the addition of Shanghai-based Teein, which has 170 employees, China will be the second-biggest location after the U.S. for Kansas City-based VML, which is part of WPP’s Young & Rubicam. VML entered China less than a year ago, when it purchased Chinese digital agency IM2.0 in October 2013.
Global agencies have been in hot pursuit of independent digital and social shops in China, which has the world’s biggest number of mobile phone subscribers and internet users, and where local know-how is especially crucial. China’s government blocks access to most Western social media, including Facebook, Twitter and YouTube, and influential Chinese social networks have developed in their place.
