• by Joe Mandese  @mp_joemandese, November 7, 2013

Publicis Groupe this morning announced the acquisition of ETO, a French agency specializing in customer relationship management (CRM). Based in Lille and Paris, ETO was founded in 1985 and has 220 employees.

Publicis singled out ETO’s expertise in “data-mining” and so-called “Big Data” technologies as part of the agency’s secret sauce.

“ETO is built upon a hybrid model bridging marketing and technology,” Publicis stated, citing a client roster that includes more than 40 brands, a hird of which are international, such as Orange, LVMH, TOTAL, GO Sport and Sephora.

Publicis said it is still finalizing its “integration” strategy for merging ETO into its organization, and said Publicis Dialog Co-Chair Christian Verger and Nicolas Zunz will oversee the process.

Current ETO directors Laurent Dunkelmann, Yves Riquet, Jean-Edouard Faidherbe and Yan Claeyssen, will maintain their management roles.