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Omnicom acquires FP1 Strategies and PLUS Communications

The firms will continue to operate under their current brands.

By CAITLIN OPRYSKO

Republican consulting firm FP1 Strategies and its sister public affairs firm PLUS Communications announced Thursday that they’ve been acquired by the public relations arm of advertising behemoth Omnicom, a sign that even amid a global media and marketing slowdown, private equity firms aren’t the only deep-pocketed investors looking to cash in on the boom times for Washington’s advocacy shops.

FP1 was launched in 2011 by GOP operatives Danny Diaz, Jon Downs and Terry Nelson, and has helped elect dozens of Republicans to federal and statewide office. In 2019, Diaz, Downs and Nelson, along with FP1 managing partners Rob Jesmer and Dave DenHerder, started PLUS Communications to translate political campaign strategy to corporate and crisis communications and bipartisan grassroots and public affairs campaigns.

The firms, which have grown to more than 200 staff between the two of them, will continue to operate under their current brands. Management at FP1 and PLUS will also remain in place as part of the sale, but the firms involved declined to disclose the financial terms of the acquisition.

In an interview, Nelson, a managing partner at both FP1 and PLUS, said that a key consideration among the firm’s leadership was the extent to which Omnicom’s platform provided not only an enhanced offering for the firms’ existing client list but also the opportunity “to take the company to the next level.”

“I think this offered that kind of partnership,” he said, adding: “We work with great brands in our own company, but Omnicom will give us the opportunity to work with an even broader group of corporate clients.”

“It was a very easy decision,” he said.

Omnicom Public Relations Group’s public affairs portfolio already includes several major D.C. firms, such as Mercury Public Affairs, DDC Public Affairs, GMMB, Portland Communications and VOX Global.

Adding FP1 Strategies and PLUS to the mix only “rounds out and takes our business to the next level in not just politics, but in healthcare, technology, crisis communications and corporate,” said Chris Foster, the global CEO of Omnicom Public Relations Group.

To Foster, Thursday’s announcement is a signal that Omnicom PR is “bullish about our industry,” even in the face of economic uncertainty that has hit the communications sector especially hard in the past year thanks to an advertising downturn. “[We] believe in the power of communications,” he added, “but even more so that regardless of the broader macroeconomic climate, public affairs and corporate are growth areas for us.”

What’s more, argued DenHerder, a managing partner at PLUS, there’s increasingly little daylight between political communications strategy and corporate comms thanks to partisan culture war creep. “Look, we all know corporate is political today, right?” he told POLITICO.

Omnicom’s acquisition hearkens back to a bygone era on K Street — the early aughts and 2010s — when communications conglomerates and international holding companies like Omnicom and WPP snapped up government affairs firms left and right.

Those deals have mixed track records — with some acquired firms struggling and even winding down after its leaders’ departures.

One Omnicom holding, Mercury, saw an exodus of some of its top lobbyists in 2021 amid a dispute with corporate ownership. A year earlier, what was then Glover Park Group merged with two other WPP properties in a deal that saw management for the new firm buy back nearly half of its stake from its parent company.

Consolidation among D.C.’s political and consulting shops has continued in recent years — only now, it’s fueled by a private equity investment bonanza, with investors betting that political and social controversies will continue to infiltrate corporate boardrooms — and therefore keep business churning for the consultant class.

DenHerder said that it was Omnicom’s willingness to buck those dynamics that helped the deal come together. “Omnicom did see the vision to get back in this space, continue to grow what is already a good public affairs offering that they have, when a lot of companies weren’t doing it,” he said.

But DenHerder pointed to another reason they opted to sell to a communications conglomerate.

“I’ve known Chris for a really long time,” said DenHerder, who overlapped with Foster at a WPP-owned firm years ago. “He knows politics. He knows communications. He knows public affairs, and when you’re dealing with private equity, they know one thing: finances.”

“[I]t was really exciting to have a partner that not only not only understands our business fundamentally, but has been doing it,” he added. “I think that was also a really big motivator for us, is a partner that is in the trenches with us, not sitting in New York, just counting, you know, the pluses and minuses.”