• by Laurie Sullivan  @lauriesullivan, January 25, 2024

NP Digital, a performance marketing agency, next week will formally announce the acquisition of Rebl House to expand the company’s offerings into creative and branding.

The acquisition strengthens the company’s services in creative storytellers and adds to its existing global team of performance, solutions specialists and data analysts.

The branding will become Rebl House by NP Digital, the company’s creative division, according to Mike Gullaksen, CEO of NP Digital.

“Creative is at the center of positioning for performance, but it’s the last level to pull,” Gullaksen says. “It’s so powerful, especially in social channels, to influence consumers, that it will be a value to the business.”

Gullaksen said this acquisition is about creative thinking, ideation, planning and research through talent and production for storytelling. It’s a move to augment NP Digital’s focus on performance.

“This gives us a entire production house,” he said.

NP Digital announced the acquisition with a creative campaign that raps a rhythmic tune to demonstrate the synergy between marketing and creative by illustrating the interdependence of simple, everyday elements.

A creative video that will accompany the announcement shows a man trying to stir coffee with a fork as the liquid drips through the prongs back into the cup.

A bicyclist in another scene tries to ride on a bike without wheels, highlighting the point that without creative, performance doesn’t work as well. And then there’s the analog clock without hands.

Rebl House, through the acquisition, becomes the in-house creative division of NP Digital -- providing brand development, influencer marketing, creative strategy and full-service video, photo, audio, and graphic and motion production.

About 13 creative brand strategists support Montreal-based Rebl House, which Alexandra Toulch founded in 2014. The company has completed more than 1,000 projects for brands including Hello Fresh, Goli, Marriott, Body Armor, L'Oreal, Toys R Us, and many others.

NP Digital will expand into other countries through a combination of building out services and additional mergers and acquisitions, a strategy that Toulch will drive. 

The combination of creativity and data-driven strategies is intended to give marketers a way to earn meaningful attention, balance short and long-term goals and maximize efforts in today’s ever-changing business landscape.

The company believes marketing without great creative does not work. In today’s society, economy and culture, attention cannot be bought. It must be earned.

That requires a uniquely integrated model rooted in deep expertise in media and creative.

When all the media and audience optimizations have been made, creative will be the most important lever to pull in order to achieve maximum performance in short-term and long-term marketing strategies.

"While we've put data-informed creative at the center of everything we've been doing for a long time now, the expanded capabilities of a creative agency allows us to unify our clients messaging across a range of platforms and channels giving brands the right to win their audiences’ attention," Gullaksen said.