BerlinRosen Holdings Expands Editorial and Analytical Capabilities with Acquisition of Message Lab
December 2023
New York, NY
O2 Investment Partners (www.o2investment.com), through BerlinRosen Holdings (“BerlinRosen”) (www.berlinrosen.com), has made an investment in and partnered with Message Lab (www.messagelab.com) and its Founder and CEO Ben Worthen. Message Lab, an award-winning content, data and analytics agency working at the intersection of marketing and communications, transforms BerlinRosen’s service offering. The Message Lab acquisition marks the group’s sixth major investment in 18 months, as they continue to build a platform to provide clients with unparalleled global full-service communications and marketing services. Terms of the investment were not disclosed. O2 made a significant investment in BerlinRosen in January 2022.
With an editorial team hailing from The Wall Street Journal, New York Times, Bloomberg, and other top publications, Message Lab combines journalism, editorial experiences, and content intelligence to help organizations forge meaningful relationships with the people they most need to reach. Message Lab won six Content Marketing Awards this year and in its five-year history has thrice been a finalist for Agency of the Year. It has worked with some of the world’s leading brands, including Google, ServiceNow, SoftBank and the Gates Foundation. With this new partnership, BerlinRosen will provide unparalleled data and analytics capabilities, engaging storytelling, forward-thinking design, and technical know-how for its clients.
“We’re thrilled to be joining BerlinRosen,” said Ben Worthen, CEO of Message Lab. “BerlinRosen shares our vision for how communications is evolving and the key role that storytelling and the ability to measure performance will play moving forward. This partnership will allow us to take our work to the next level.”
“Message Lab is shaping the future of content and analytics,” said Jonathan Rosen, Principal and Co-Founder of BerlinRosen. “Bringing Message Lab into our network will allow our clients to utilize data to develop, measure and refine scroll stopping editorial content from an award-winning editorial team and create powerful connections with target audiences.”
“Integrating our content intelligence model into BerlinRosen’s larger network will allow us to help even more clients realize the potential of their communications and marketing programs,” said Will Sullivan, Chief Strategy Officer of Message Lab. “And ultimately, we’ll be able to help better connect people to engaging brand content experiences that drive impact.”
This investment complements BerlinRosen’s team of over 600 strategists across 10 offices in the United States and Europe.
Sean Darin at O2 commented, “Message Lab provides a key missing piece to the BerlinRosen platform. Their content intelligence and analytics expertise will benefit customers across all agencies within the platform. We are thrilled to welcome Ben, Will, and the entire Message Lab team to the platform.”
About Message Lab
Message Lab, an award-winning content-marketing agency, combines journalism, editorial experiences, and content intelligence to help organizations forge meaningful relationships with the people they most need to reach with communications that are credible, relevant, and effective. With deep roots in some of the world’s top newsrooms, Message Lab uses the tradecraft of journalism to help clients find the most relevant topics and angles for their content and tell stories that are interesting to people. Its team of experienced editorial designers brings stories to life in engaging ways. Additional information is available at www.messagelab.com.
About BerlinRosen
BerlinRosen is a full-service communications firm with more than 600 communications and campaign strategists in New York, Washington, D.C., Los Angeles, and Amsterdam. Since its founding in 2005, BerlinRosen has powerfully expanded its presence in corporate, social impact/ESG, nonprofit, entertainment, media, racial justice, healthcare, hospitality, lifestyle, technology, issue advocacy and workers’ rights communications. BerlinRosen has received many important accolades, including being the only agency to be named #1 Best PR Firm in America by Observer more than once (2023; 2022; 2018), PRWeek’s Outstanding Large Agency of the Year (2023), PRNews’ Large PR Agency of the Year (2021) and 5/5 Stars on Forbes’ latest Best PR Agencies in America list. Additional information is available at www.berlinrosen.com.
About O2 Investment Partners
O2 Investment Partners is a Midwestern based private equity firm that seeks to acquire majority interests in lower middle market B2B services, technology, and select industrial companies. The firm invests in businesses with earnings growth potential and a clear path to the creation of shareholder value. O2 invests with a view toward partnering with management to build and grow the business and take it to its next stage of development. This requires not only a clear vision and strategic plan to create shareholder value, but a close partnership and alignment of interest with management. Additional information is available at www.o2investment.com.
CONTACT
O2 Investment Partners
Sean Darin