Sherman will depart at year's end. He's taking on a full-time marketing and communications professorship at the UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media starting next spring.

Formed late last year, the Stagwell Marketing Cloud is a unit that develops SaaS and DaaS products to support transformation for in-house marketers.

It's the first time since 2012 that a holding company other than WPP has taken the top spot in the Global Effie holding group competition.

Headquartered in San Diego, the new agency will specialize in branding, campaigns and launches with a roster of clients like Casper and Royal Caribbean Group.

The clients are (or were) real, but the stories about the botched work are made up and part of the agency's humorous celebration of its 150th anniversary.

The Constellation Group was formed in early 2020 after Stagwell Founder Mark Penn had taken over as CEO of MDC Partners and was reorganizing the company.

The agency has added two new roles: Rhonda George-Denniston has been promoted to Chief Learning and Development Officer and Monica Torres to Executive Director, Global Recruiting.

The firm was founded in 2017 and later absorbed transformation consultancy Gate One. It has since set up an analytics hub in Amsterdam and a design studio in Mexico City.

The agency will develop a new global positioning and creative platform for the brand. The win represents an expansion of the agency's relationship with the client.

Global media retail revenue totaled $88 billion last year and is expected to reach $101 billion this year. In the U.S. GroupM projects that retail media will reach $33 billion this year after rising "from next to nothing" just a few years ago.