SPLIT Launches as a Global Creative Technology Company

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Jan 22, 2010, 11:07 ET

NEW YORK, Jan. 22 /PRNewswire/ -- SPLIT, a new creative technology venture, today is launching as an independent Interpublic Group revenue unit, aligned with McCann Worldgroup. SPLIT will develop global strategic marketing and technology partnerships with agencies and marketers, and create SPLIT-owned new product offerings. Founded and headed by Greg Smith, McCann Worldgroup CIO, the SPLIT concept has been R&D-tested in McCann's New York headquarters agency, working with Joyce King Thomas, Chief Creative Officer.

SPLIT's CEO, Smith, said: "Our focus is on re-inventing invention. Creative technology, the pairing of content and code, clearly is an area with huge potential, including the ability to own 'reach.' SPLIT is a new model. It is a business within a business – handling digital creative and production, and importantly also developing and leveraging our own software products that can be licensed to marketers or consumers."

SPLIT is designed as a lean and fast specialist boutique that will work in tandem with agencies and marketers, acting as a catalyst to translate brand ideas into valued consumer experiences, identifying new ideas, and conceptualizing new apps as the industry – and the consumer – expands from mobile apps to apps in any device.

SPLIT, with some 30 employees, already has brought in over $1 million in revenue from various projects and currently is working on a number of new apps that will launch in January, as well as a social media platform that will debut in the first quarter. SPLIT will continue to work with McCann in NY as well as with other Worldgroup companies and other IPG entities, and in addition to its NY base, SPLIT hubs are being formed in EMEA and APAC with other centers to follow.

John Dooner, CEO of McCann Worldgroup, said, "SPLIT is a fabulous resource to be able to take to clients. It enhances our offerings to them and their ability to offer added value to consumers."

Added King Thomas, "SPLIT not only has given us sophisticated technological support, but has been a huge creative asset to us - contributing to ideation, participating in new business opportunities, and producing some of our most innovative digital work over the past year."

SPLIT successes, working in collaboration with McCann, include both technology solutions – website design and development, web application development, content management systems and the like - and cutting edge initiatives.

Said Smith: "SPLIT can equip agencies with all the tools to deliver a product, from ideation to activation. When you look at the core of all these tools/platforms/apps, you typically have small tech teams and novel approaches and ideas to a product. All of which will happen at SPLIT or through SPLIT rather than letting our IP leak outside. We have the means to produce any platform for today's or tomorrow's consumer and marketer. There is unlimited potential for boundless deployment of ideas, including the utilization of platforms and technology to spread ideas, information."

McCann Worldgroup, one of the world's largest marketing communications companies, is part of the Interpublic Group (NYSE: IPG).

SOURCE McCann Worldgroup