Commentary

You & Mr Jones Completes $260 Million Series B Funding

You & Mr Jones, the marketing advisory group founded by former Havas global CEO David Jones five years ago, has just completed a $260 million round of series B financing that values the company at $1.36 billion. It first achieved “unicorn” status a little over a year ago. 

The financing round follows a strong year for the company, which posted organic revenue growth of 27% in the third quarter. 

With a staff of 3,000, the company is expanding rapidly and reports having 300 open positions to fill. Spearheading the effort to fill those jobs is the company’s newly hired Chief People Officer Paulette Forte, who has also been named an associate partner at the firm. 

Forte joins You & Mr Jones from the National Basketball Association, where she was senior director of human services. Earlier, she served in senior HR positions at branding, advertising and media companies such as Scholastic, Jack Morton Worldwide, Grey, FutureBrand, Turner Broadcasting and Havas.

Y&MJ bills itself as a “brandtech group” that helps companies devise and implement digital transformation strategies, including the development of in-house marketing and advertising agency operations via subsidiary Oliver. It also has several content- and influencer-focused companies among other specialty firms. And it has investments in other firms, including Pinterest and cloud-based ad-versioning firm Jivox. 

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“While technology is clearly at the heart of our model, it’s the combination of talent and technology that allows us to deliver,” said Jones. “Paulette is a brilliant people leader who has the expertise and experience to ensure our talent management and processes keep pace with the exponential growth we're seeing in the business as brands dramatically accelerate their digital transformation.”

The company has worked with clients like Unilever, Google and Marriott among many others.

 

 

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