Accenture has agreed to acquire creator and social agency Whalar from Whalar Group, adding a specialist operation in influencer marketing, creator partnerships, and social commerce to Accenture Song. Terms were not disclosed. Whalar’s co-CEOs Emma Harman and Jo Cronk will remain in place, and roughly 170 employees across the U.S. and Europe will join Accenture.
The transaction extends a pattern. Accenture Song has been buying its way deeper into the parts of marketing that still command growth budgets, following acquisitions including Superdigital in 2025 and Unlimited in 2024. Traditional agency services have matured into a lower-growth, more procurement-heavy business. Creator marketing offers something different: faster feedback loops, closer links to commerce, and a data stream that can be fed into broader customer acquisition and media optimization programs.
That is the real prize here. Accenture is not simply adding an agency roster. It is buying a system for sourcing creators, running campaigns across markets, and measuring outcomes in a way that can be wrapped into enterprise consulting mandates. For large brands, influencer spend has often sat awkwardly between brand marketing, media, and e-commerce teams. Accenture wants to make that spend more governable, more attributable, and easier to scale globally. That is a consulting problem as much as a creative one.
Whalar brings operating heft. The company says it has executed more than $600 million in creator campaigns across 40-plus countries and 15 languages. That scale matters because multinational clients increasingly want creator programs that look less like experimental media buys and more like repeatable infrastructure.
The timing also reflects a broader M&A backdrop. Acquire.fyi data shows business-and-finance sector deal volume is up 7.6% year to date, even as aggregate deal value in the sector has fallen 12%, a sign that buyers are still pursuing capability tuck-ins while remaining selective on price. This deal fits that mold.
Whalar Group will remain independent with its other businesses and enter a three-year strategic partnership with Accenture Song. That structure gives Accenture continued access to adjacent creator-economy assets without taking on the entire group. Competitors in consulting and holding companies will read this as another signal that social discovery is no longer a channel decision. It is becoming core customer infrastructure.
Source: Company press release and Acquire.fyi's proprietary data
