Agency

Get Engaged, Agency Behind DoorDash’s 50 Cent Super Bowl Campaign, Joins SAMY in Reported Nine-Figure Deal

Published on October 7, 2026

Get Engaged, the Atlanta-founded social-first marketing agency that built DoorDash’s viral “Beef 101” campaign with 50 Cent, is joining global agency SAMY in what co-founder Cam Fordham told Fortune is a “low nine-figure deal.” The deal, which includes both stock and cash, closed September 30.

All three Get Engaged co-founders, Fordham, Alex Dermer, and Ben Hiott, are staying on, with Dermer stepping into the CEO role. The Raine Group served as Get Engaged’s exclusive financial advisor.

“We built Get Engaged to help brands connect with culture in ways that move their businesses forward,” Dermer said in the companies’ joint announcement. “Joining SAMY gives us the global reach, technology and talent to take that vision further.”

Founded in 2016, Get Engaged started by working with Atlanta hip-hop artists including Waka Flocka Flame and T.I. on meet-and-greets and tour merchandise before expanding into a full social-first agency. The company has grown to clients including Sephora, Raising Cane’s, DoorDash, Live Nation, NBCUniversal, EA Games, Sazerac, Universal Music Group, and Perplexity, with Fordham telling Fortune that revenue has grown 40% year over year.

Dermer described the inflection point behind that growth: “There’s this point of inflection when you flip that model, and people start to come to you because they’ve heard of a campaign you’ve run or a big moment you’ve been a part of.” The announcement puts current headcount at more than 120 employees across Atlanta, New York, Nashville, and Los Angeles, though the release’s own company boilerplate separately cites more than 100.

Get Engaged will anchor SAMY’s U.S. operations and retain its name, founders, and leadership. Hiott told Fortune the agency wasn’t looking for an acquirer to overhaul its approach: “It’s not about correction, it’s about connection.”

SAMY, Madrid-founded and majority-owned by private equity firm Bridgepoint, operates with roughly 1,200 employees across 22 offices in more than 55 markets, serving clients including L’Oréal, Barilla, The North Face, Diageo, Microsoft, Red Bull, Grindr, and Unilever. “Having established a proven track record as a leader in Europe and Latin America, scaling our U.S. footprint was one of SAMY’s primary growth objectives, and Get Engaged is the ideal partner to lead that expansion,” SAMY CEO Juan Andrés Elhazaz said in the announcement.

The Get Engaged deal extends a run of expansion SAMY has pursued largely through account wins rather than acquisitions in 2026, after a 2025 marked by agency purchases. SAMY picked up Amsterdam-based team5pm in October 2025 and German agency Intermate that April, both under Bridgepoint’s backing. This year, SAMY has instead landed a string of global and regional mandates: Unilever’s Foods business in March, Barilla’s global Influencer Marketing partnership in April, and an expanded European remit for longtime client The North Face in September. Get Engaged represents a return to the acquisition approach and a major expansion of SAMY’s existing U.S. footprint.

The transaction also lands inside a record year for Creator Economy dealmaking. Quartermast Advisors tracked 70 M&A transactions in the sector in the first half of 2026 alone, up 23% year over year, with agencies accounting for 21.4% of deal volume and media overtaking software as the most-targeted category for the first time.

Fordham pointed to the pandemic as the turning point for Get Engaged’s growth, when brands began shifting budgets from radio and billboard spots toward digital and, soon after, into TikTok. That shift has continued at the market level: according to WARC Media figures cited by Fortune, social media has overtaken paid search to become the world’s largest advertising channel by spend, with global ad spend forecast to grow 9.1% to $1.3 trillion in 2026 and nearly 80% of that concentrated in retail media, paid search, and social platforms. Linear TV, which accounted for 41.3% of global ad spend in 2013, was on track to fall to 12.4% by 2025.

No layoffs are expected as part of the combination. Bridgepoint Europe Deputy Managing Partner Héctor Pérez called the deal “another important milestone in SAMY’s global growth journey” and said the combined business would have “the scale, capabilities and local expertise to support clients across markets.”