Independent PR giant Ruder Finn has acquired Hong Kong-based digital marketing and analytics consultancy Daylight Partnership.

Ruder Finn

Daylight Partnership specializes in digital strategy and consulting, PR, social media marketing, mobile app development and website design and for clients in the consumer, lifestyle, tech and healthcare sectors. Clients include Digital Domain, Fitbit, Lee Kum Kee, L’Oréal, New World Development, Prudential, Sino Group, SOGO and Swire Properties.

The agency was founded in 2013 by managing director David Ko, who was previously Waggener Edstrom’s Asia Pacific head and also held stints at Edelman Worldwide and Hill & Knowlton, as well as in-house marketing roles with Cisco Systems and Redback Networks.

David KoDavid Ko

Daylight will now merge with Ruder Finn’s full-service digital practice RFI Studios, and will henceforth be known as RFI Daylight. Ko assumes the role of senior VP of RFI Studios Asia and will lead this regional RFI arm, managing a team of approximately 50 across China, Hong Kong, Singapore and India dedicated to helping the agency create social media-backed integrated campaigns for clients in the consumer, luxury, retail, healthcare and technology sectors.

RFI Studios was established in 1999. The digital group expanded into China in 2013.

Ko will report to Ruder Finn Asia chairman Jean-Michel Dumont and will work in tandem with RFI teams in the U.S. The newly-minted RFI Daylight will also lead a global analytics offering that will be staffed in the U.S. and Asia, to which all agency clients will have access.

Ruder Finn CEO Kathy Bloomgarden told O’Dwyer’s that Daylight’s addition strengthens the agency’s digital expertise, and its global insights and analytics capabilities would allow clients to gain better insights that yield better-targeted customer outreach.

Daylight Partnership

“The addition of Daylight strengthens the analytics capability that is so critical to our client’s success, one that certainly has become a top priority in all our markets,” Bloomgarden said. “From predictive analytics, data mining, modeling and even AI, the world of campaign strategy is changing quickly and is core to the Ruder Finn business. Our strategy was to source the best expertise available in the digital marketing and analytics space and we found just that in Daylight. They are out in front of the innovation taking place in the content sector and can apply their insights across all industries. These attributes, along with David Ko’s highly respected expertise, provide great additional strategic advantages to our clients.”

New York-based Ruder Finn in 2015 accounted for nearly $ 74 million in net fees, according to O’Dwyer’s ranking of PR firms.