| BlueFocus Communication Group | |
| Type: | Public company |
| Industry: | Advertising |
| Location City: | Beijing |
| Location Country: | China |
BlueFocus Communication Group(Chinese: 蓝色光标) is an ad agency engaged in marketing.[1]
BlueFocus was founded by Oscar Zhao on July 1, 1996.[2] It was launched on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 2010.[3]
BlueFocus acquired a minority stake in Huntsworth, a London-based PR group, for £36.5 million in April 2013,[4] and in December 2013, acquired a majority holding in social media marketing organisation We Are Social for £18.7m.[5]
Since 2014, BlueFocus has engaged in international expansion. It acquired a majority holding in Fuseproject, a U.S. design agency, for $46.7 million in July 2014,[6] and a majority holding in the North American assets of Canadian advertising company Vision7 International, including Cossette, an ad agency, and Citizen Relation, a PR company, in December 2014 for $210 million.[7]
By 2014, it was listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange with a market capitalisation of $3.8 billion, and was ranked as the 17th largest ad agency in the world. As of 2015, its clients included PepsiCo, Lenovo, Volkswagen, and BMW.[8]
In 2017, it attempted to merge its international efforts with US-based Fluent, but eventually discontinued the effort over political concerns.[9] In 2019, it advanced into an arrangement whereby its international subsidiaries were partially divested into a separate company Blue Impact, which was to be purchased by a special purpose acquisition company (SPAC) Legacy Acquisition led by ex-Procter & Gamble executives Edwin Rigaud and Darryl McCall to publicly list in the United States.[10]