Odopod acquired by Nurun

Of late, the direction in the web industry has been more towards small, fleet-of-foot agencies, but Odopod appears to have bucked the trend. The digital agency, whose clients include EA and Google, has been acquired by Nurun, a global interactive marketing agency.

Odopod founder and executive creative director Tim Barber told .net that Odopod had been looking for the right partner to help the company realise its ambition for creating a new kind of company that "thinks like a startup, understands brands like an ad agency and creates products like an innovation firm", and said Nurun was the natural fit, the one company that 'got' Odopod and its "unique culture".

Barber thinks the merger provides Odopod the platform it wanted, enabling the team to "focus on even more innovative work and to deliver that work anywhere in the world", enabling the company to expand alongside its clients. The deal will also enable Odopod to focus on the parts it's really good at, explained Barber, while tapping into a deep talent pool for the parts it's not. "Because Nurun has such a solid technology pedigree, we'll be able to expand into an even broader array of platforms without having to develop that expertise ourselves," he added.

We asked whether Barber thought more deals of this sort were on the cards, and whether a shift back towards larger organisations was imminent. "For Odopod, this partnership is really the best of both worlds: we can continue to be small but have the resources and support to think and deliver big. Because we'll continue to operate independently, we'll still maintain a small, boutique feel for our clients [but have] access to a network of talent and insight around the world," he said. "But we're also seeing many of our small agency friends joining larger holding companies and ad networks, so I'm sure there are more ahead."

Barber warns against just jumping into a deal without a lot of thought, however: "For us, it was important to find a partner who wasn't just going to measure success with a spreadsheet. We needed someone who shared our cultural values, appetite for innovation and commitment to working with the most exciting clients."