Vanksen will continue to be led by its current management team and will operate under its own name. The agency reinforces Datawords’ digital skills in terms of social media, social data, strategic consulting and digital activation. In return, Datawords will provide Vanksen with supplementary production capacity as well as a platform for the worldwide roll-out of its services.

Thanks to Datawords’ platform and its unique know-how in terms of the international roll-out of content and of multilingual technologies, Vanksen’s chief areas of expertise (social media, SEO, social data and e-reputation, strategic consulting and digital activation) will thus now be available in 60 languages and as many cultural specificities.

This transaction allows Vanksen to broaden its horizons, representing a major step in its development after the recent creations of loyalty, data and user experience departments, as well as the opening of an office last year in Brussels.

The acquisition of Vanksen means that the Datawords Group will boast a turnover of more than 50 million euros, and have over 500 employees spread out over its principal hubs, Paris, Luxembourg, Hong Kong, Seoul, Tokyo, New York, Milan and Barcelona. The Group plans to make other acquisitions in the future to gain a foothold in new countries and continue to bolster its range of specific skills.

“Our promise to reconcile creativity and performance remains intact. Thanks to Datawords’ multicultural skills, we are now in a position to provide a comprehensive vision and worldwide roll-outs. There are very few digital agencies on the market today that can pride themselves on having so many languages and skills internally,” explains Xavier Lesueur, Co-Founder of Vanksen.

“We are delighted to welcome the Vanksen teams into the Datawords Group. After successfully integrating the video production agency Digiprod in 2014, we were committed to supplementing our dynamic organic growth with a new acquisition, one that would allow us to provide our clients and prospective clients with additional expertise. We were won over by Vanksen’s capabilities, particularly in social media and consulting, by the complementary nature of our services and by the company’s potential for international development,” adds Alexandre Crazover, Co-Founder of Datawords.

As Edouard Moinet, Managing Partner at Cathay Capital, makes clear, “Cathay Capital, Keensight Capital and Bpifrance are very happy as shareholders to continue to participate in the development of Datawords and in the building of an integrated global group dedicated to the international deployment of content and multilingual technologies. With its second acquisition in less than three years, Datawords is strengthening its reputation as a true acquisition platform and intends to see this confirmed in the future.”