Key Points
- Accenture Song agreed to acquire creator agency Whalar from Whalar Group.
- Whalar's 170-plus staff and co-CEOs Emma Harman and Jo Cronk join Accenture Song.
- Terms were undisclosed; a comparable 2024 deal was valued near $500 million.
- Whalar Group keeps The Lighthouse, Sixteenth, and a three-year Accenture partnership.
The clearest sign the creator economy has grown up isn't a new platform or a record brand deal. It's a Big Four consultancy buying its way in. Accenture, through its Accenture Song arm, has agreed to acquire Whalar — one of the largest independent creator and social agencies — from its parent, Whalar Group.
The deal
Terms were not disclosed, though Whalar Group co-founder Neil Waller called it the industry's "largest creator economy transaction." For scale, when Publicis bought influencer agency Influential in 2024, the deal was reported at roughly $500 million. Whalar's team of more than 170 people across the U.S., U.K., Ireland, Germany, and Spain moves to Accenture Song, with co-CEOs Emma Harman and Jo Cronk staying in their roles. "Social is where brands are discovered, where modern commerce is happening and where consumer habits tell us what products and services are going to win next," said Accenture Song CEO Ndidi Oteh.
What the founders kept
The structure is the tell. Accenture is buying the services business — the agency that runs influencer campaigns for brands — while Whalar Group, led by co-founder Neil Waller, holds onto the asset-heavier ventures: talent firm Sixteenth, studio Foam, Moby Ventures, The Business of Creativity, and The Lighthouse, the members-only creator campus that opened in Greenpoint this spring. The two sides will run a three-year strategic partnership. In other words, the founders sold the consulting-adjacent revenue and kept the real estate, the IP, and the platform plays.
Why a consultancy wants in
For Accenture Song, Whalar is the latest in a run of creator and social acquisitions — Superdigital in 2025, Unlimited in 2024 — aimed at turning influencer marketing from an agency line item into an enterprise capability sold to the same CMOs buying its AI and commerce work. The bet is that brands no longer treat creators as a campaign add-on but as core customer infrastructure, and that the firm advising them on everything else should own that layer too. When the consultancies start consolidating a sector, the sector has stopped being a frontier and become a market.
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