City deal: Goodway Group snaps up Canton with key role for former Havas exec Paul Frampton-Calero
Goodway Group told City A.M. this morning it has reached an agreement to buy UK-based Canton Marketing Solutions.
The business will be merged with its marketing transformation consultancy Control v Exposed (CvE), which is run by ex-Havas Media Group CEO, Paul Frampton-Calero.
Canton’s co-founders Rob Webster and Nick King both join the CvE leadership team as Global VPs of Strategy and Commercial respectively, reporting to Paul Frampton-Calero.
The expanded 40-person strong operation “will accelerate CvE’s growth,” the company shared this morning, “and strengthen its expertise in martech consulting, data engineering and in preparing global consumer brands for third-party cookie depreciation.”
Founded in 2019, the business has since expanded its service offering from a focus on operating models – developing effective in-housed or hybrid agency/ staff marketing teams and helping brands gain media-buying independence – into technical models; namely martech consultancy.
“Few businesses can be impartial when it comes to consulting. Whether it’s opting to in house media buying or technology transformation, a consulting arm’s vested interest is usually to recommend the product its parent sells,” CvE president Paul Frampton-Calero said this a.m.
“That doesn’t always lead to the best growth outcomes for clients,” he added. “Only through independence, where the business model isn’t built on selling someone else’s product or one of your own sister companies, can you be impartial. Ambitious global consumer brands value marketing transformation consultancy, when it’s truly independent.”
In addition, CvE Global VP of Commercial Nick King said that “Canton disrupted the market when we launched four years ago, giving businesses a new way to get advice and support to upgrade their digital marketing. This acquisition represents the second phase of our evolution and will be a continuation of the work of the last three and a half years.”
With respective growth rates of 277 per cent and 183 per cent for CvE and Canton in 2021, Goodway Group believes that combining the two businesses will give the company greater scope for growth.
The company also plans to use the merger to broaden its service offering for a new and expanded client roster which now includes Flutter Group, which includes Paddy Power, Betfair and Pokerstars, as well as Vodafone, Reckitt Benckiser, BBC, Ice Travel Group/ TravelSupermarket, KFC, Boots Media Group and HMD/Nokia.