Pierry Blog

Redwood City, September 20, 2017—Pierry Inc. is pleased to announce today that Wunderman, a WPP company and globally leading, digital agency, has taken a majority stake in our company.

“Pierry is one of the very best companies at helping clients use Salesforce Marketing Cloud to manage their customer relationships,” said Mark Read, Global CEO of Wunderman. “I’m delighted that Josh Pierry and his team will be joining Wunderman, deepening our technology consulting expertise and giving our clients access to a world-class team for working with Salesforce, one of the world’s fastest growing software companies.”

Pierry—which began as a team of two back in 2008—has rapidly grown to employee nearly one hundred strategy, creative, technology and digital specialists, with offices in Redwood City, CA, Boulder, CO, New York City, NY, Ruston, LA and Kyoto, Japan. Through our proprietary MaaS™(Marketing as a Service) approach—a unique blend of technological expertise partnered with creative excellence—our mission has always been to aid companies in optimizing their digital marketing initiatives, improve efficiency, impact and increase ROI. Pierry’s revenues were $14.5 million USD for the 2016 year-end.

“It’s not every day [that] you get the chance to become a part of one of the largest and most respected digital agencies in the world. Having Wunderman as our partner allows us to continue to scale rapidly and increase our service capabilities for our clients,” said our Founder and CEO, Josh Pierry. Today, Pierry serves a vast range of clients across a variety of sectors including, LifeLock, Louisiana Tech University, Major League Soccer team San Jose Earthquakes and Yeti Coolers.

The investment is a part of WPP’s operational streamline—progressing its strategy to focus on three key verticals that differentiate the Group’s client services: technology, data and digital content. As a Platinum Salesforce Marketing Partner, Pierry will join the ranks among WPP’s other investments in innovative technology service companies, including AppNexus, mySupermarket and Within Unlimited (VR/AR). WPP’s digital asset portfolio includes companies like Cognified, Deeplocal (an innovation studio and spin-off from Carnegie Mellon University, Marketplace Ignition (Amazon-focused e-commerce), Medialets, Salmon and The Cocktail (a digital consultancy).

The Group has also invested in several digital content companies, including Russell Simmons’ All Def Digital, Gimlet, Imagina (a content rights and media company based in Spain), Mic, Refinery29 and VICE. Their roster of wholly-owned digital agencies also includes Essence, AKQA, F.biz, POSSIBLE, VML, Mirum and Wunderman.

WPP’s digital revenues came in at over $7.5 billion USD in 2016—representing 39% of the Group’s total revenues of $19.4 billion. The Group has set a projected target of 40-45% of revenue to be derived from digital in the next four to five years (digital represented 41% of WPP’s revenues as of June 30, 2017). WPP companies collectively employee 29,000 people and generate revenues of $7.5 billion in North America.

“Joining forces with Wunderman is a tremendous opportunity,” said Josh Pierry, and we look forward to the contingency it brings to continue to advance, grow and deliver our clients the best service in the industry.

 

Award Honors Lee’s Vision & Leadership at the Organization’s Annual Conference in San Diego

We are pleased to announce today that Ben Lee, our Chief Marketing Officer, has received the “Outstanding Marketer” award from the Academy of Marketing Science (AMS).

The award was presented last Friday, May 26^th by the non-profit organization which is dedicated to promoting excellence in marketing practices and knowledge.

“Ben and Pierry Inc. epitomize the spirit of the award in advancing the role of marketing through innovative and ethical practice,” said Adilson Borges, AMS President. “In particular, Ben’s belief that marketing must be leading strategic efforts of companies today because it is marketing’s responsibility to build and maintain an intimate relationship with customers. In this way, we can create truly valuable experiences for customers.”

More than 400 marketing professionals gathered at the Academy’s annual conference in San Diego, where Lee was recognized for shepherding Pierry’s rapid growth and innovative client solutions.

“I am extremely honored to be here this evening to accept this award on behalf of my Pierry colleagues – and our clients – who are embracing the opportunity of digital marketing in some really unique ways,” Lee noted at the conference’s closing ceremony. “Digital marketing presents a huge opportunity for companies to create deeper relationships with their customers, but the ability to fully understand and leverage it requires a whole new set of skills that many companies simply don’t have, nor can they afford to bring in house. Pierry continues to add manpower and functional expertise that enable us to partner with marquee brands across a variety of sectors, and deliver the best possible results for our clients.”

For over 40 years, AMS has annually recognized an individual who epitomizes the spirit and character of the Academy and its ideals. Previous winners have included CMOS, CEOs and entrepreneurs to the likes of Walt Disney, Jeff Campbell (Burger King), Robbie Brozin (Nando’s Peri Peri) and Mathew Berry (ESPN). (For a complete list please visit: https://ams.site-ym.com/page/OutstandingMarketer).

About Pierry

• Named the 538^th fastest growing company in the country by Inc. Magazine in their 2016 “Inc. 5000” list
• #6 Fastest Growing Company in the San Francisco Bay Area by the San Francisco Business Times
• Pierry – which began as a team of 2 people in the emerging digital marketing space in 2008 – now has employees in offices throughout the United States and in Japan, and serves a wide range of clients, from start-ups to multi-billion dollar global brands.
• Pierry coined the term MaaS (Marketing as a Service) to describe the unique way it helps its clients design, develop and execute marketing solutions that dramatically improve efficiency and impact, and increase ROI.
• Founded in 2008 by Josh Pierry, the company has grown into a global preferred digital marketing partner for companies in all sectors, with offices in Redwood City, CA, Boulder, CO, Ruston, LA, Albany, NY and Kyoto, Japan.

It’s no secret that in the digital marketing world, the skills of developers are in high demand—particularly the skills of developers familiar with Salesforce and Salesforce Marketing Cloud. However, many the curriculum of most undergraduate programs and coding boot camps don’t have the opportunity to cover the many intricacies of these complex marketing platforms, meaning employers are left to fill that gap, often resorting to developers having to learn as they go on live-client accounts.

Needless to say, this system is not always ideal, especially when your client base is on a constant increase.

To remedy this, Pierry introduced “Pierry Academy” an intense 4-week pre-employment training program designed to train developers in the Salesforce Marketing Cloud platform and various integration processes.

All participants in the Pierry Academy were recent graduates from San Francisco’s General Assembly, a global network of campuses that provides technical, creative, and business training programs designed to prepare students for today’s technological needs. Each participant was interviewed by Pierry staff and chosen to participate in our Pierry Academy with the understanding that successful completion would result in permanent employment.

Over the course of four weeks, the Academy participants came to the Pierry headquarters in Redwood City, CA, where they participated in intense training sessions, while also gaining exposure to real-life, hands on client work.

We are happy to announce we had a 100% passing rate among our academy participants, giving them the knowledge and experience to not only work in Salesforce, but also some real-world experience dealing with the multiple, often complex implementation issues that our clients require

But what made Pierry Academy so successful? We caught up with three of our recent grads (Hila Vaisler, Ayush Jha and Bryan Smith) to discuss life after post-Academy:

What was your biggest takeaway from Pierry Academy?

Hila:

I really appreciated the technical knowledge that I gained from the class, especially since I haven’t worked in Salesforce and Marketing Cloud before. We learned its uses and how to create data extensions, Journeys etc. It was nice coming in as a group with people you went to school with, getting trained as group and working on projects together. It felt like a continuation of General Assembly because we were all together in a class setting.

Ayush:

I liked the opportunity to collaborate as a team, and having experienced implementation consultants come in and show how the teams behave and work together was helpful. Everyone was very accommodating and Pierry’s organizational structure made it easy to get to know everyone quickly.

Bryan:

I feel I got a much better understanding of the Salesforce atmosphere.

What was your favorite part about “Life at Pierry”?

Hila:

The people! It’s a younger environment with a lot of collaboration. And someone is always there to help when questions come up. Everyone is willing to drop what they are doing and help out, even if they are busy. All the functions outside of work are fun also– getting to meet the team in a more casual environment, plus having the dogs around is great.

Ayush:

The open atmosphere. I like knowing that as long as I work hard and am responsible for my tasks, then everything will go well. The youthful environment is great because people are more open to new ideas for tasks and projects.

Bryan:

The vibe and the people. It’s a work hard / play hard attitude.

What has been one of your biggest challenges since working at Pierry?

Hila:

Dodging all the nerf bullets!

Ayush:

Getting ready for the certifications has been tough and getting trained up on the tools takes time.

Bryan:

Working through the technical issues since I am new to the Salesforce platform.

What advice would you give to new hires at Pierry?

Hila:

Talk to everyone and ask questions, ask for examples of similar work that they have done in the past.

Ayush:

Focus on getting familiar with Salesforce and ExactTarget. Everyone is super helpful and is willing to help you.

Bryan:

Practice makes perfect. Make sure you go through the program and understand how it works and is set up.

We’re excited to see our recent Pierry Academy graduates working on projects and fully integrated into the day-to-day. As we continue to grow, we’ll be working to build more programs like Pierry Academy to not only help empower potential employees to build upon their skills, but to ensure every brand and company we partner with at Pierry has the resources to make their marketing technology needs a reality.

Congrats to the first graduating class of Pierry Academy! Excited to have you in the Pierry family and to see what you can do!