New York Times makes VR move with design agency acquisition

The NYT VR campaign recently won a Mobile Lions award

The New York Times Company is moving into virtual and augmented reality with the acquisition of Brooklyn-based design agency, Fake Love.

The all-cash deal, which was announced on Friday, will see the NYT expand its T Brand marketing services agency, growing its experiential marketing, virtual reality and augmented reality capabilities.

“We’ve worked with Fake Love on projects in the past and have been very impressed with their experiential and creative skills,” said Sebastian Tomich, senior vice president, advertising and innovation, at the New York Times.

“We’re now very excited to pair their capabilities with our ad products on The Times, with T Brand Studio, as we expand into producing campaigns off of The Times and into the fast-growing worlds of VR and AR.”

Fake Love founders Layne Braunstein and Josh Horowitz, said in a statement: “In conjunction with T Brand Studio we will be able to bring our progressive take on advertising, content connections and brand experience to more people in a broader, more diverse way.”

The deal marks the NYT’s second marketing acquisition in the past six months, following its March buyout of influencer social media marketing agency HelloSociety.

Last year, the NYT and Google distributed more than 1.3 million Google Cardboard viewers to Times subscribers to bring them VR content, an initiative that in June won the Grand Prix in the Mobile Lions awards, in the “app as part of a campaign” category.