Publicis Adds Big Fuel to Vivaki Wing

Publicis Groupe has purchased a 51 percent stake in social media agency Big Fuel, the companies announced today. Big Fuel will become part of the holding company’s Vivaki wing, which includes Digitas, Razorfish, Starcom MediaVest Group, and Zenith Optimedia.

It will report through Laura Lang, CEO of Digitas and a Vivaki board director. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Big Fuel, headquartered in New York with an office in Detroit, counts General Motors, T-Mobile, Clorox, Microsoft, Philips, and Colgate-Palmolive as clients. The agency has made a name for itself as a big brand “social AOR,” growing from 30 to 170 employees in the last year and a half.

In a prepared release, Lang of Digitas said, “Big Fuel is a dynamic social media agency with a scalable model that encompasses social tools, process, a content studio, and a distribution network. As a result, it will extend the creative and content resourcing of Digitas and Razorfish. They specialize in taking brands from content to commerce, and their social media operating system has earned them Social AOR status with some of the world’s most powerful marketers.”