Toronto’s 5Crowd has been acquired by international package design and production company Sgsco as it continues to diversify its offering for clients.
5Crowd was founded by Bram Warshafsky and Rachel Zimmer (pictured), both former brand managers at Johnson & Johnson, at the beginning of 2014. The company specializes in crowdsourcing marketing and content production using a proprietary platform to engage a network of freelancers in 150 cities globally for production work. Primarily working in CPG, it has worked with clients including Johnson & Johnson, AB InBev, P&G and Pfizer.
Sgsco clients will have access to the software platform that powers 5Crowd’s work, when it makes sense. Both Warshafsky and Zimmer will continue to lead 5Crowd going forward and the agency will maintain its Toronto footprint, working closely with Traffik and its founder Mark Ferrier. Traffik, also based in Toronto, was acquired by Sgsco last summer.
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“Businesses continue to seek different service options, and [5Crowd] provides a crowdsourced, almost gig-economy solution,” says Aidan Tracey, CEO of Sgsco.
While Sgsco is grounded in packaging and production design, it has been diversifying its offering to clients through the other agencies within the group, such as Traffik for integrated communications, Marks for design adaptation, Webb deVlam for brand design and Kwikee for distribution of creative assets and data to partners like retailers and app developers.
“All clients today are under significant pressure to grow top line revenue and bottom line earnings,” Tracey says. “But everyone has different needs on the way there. 5Crowd is a rapid, value-based production platform, and I think the reason we acquired it is because that’s a need that exists with a lot of customers who might not use it for everything, but definitely want that choice.”
