- Brian Morrissey

NEW YORK Wunderman has continued to build its digital capabilities with the addition of Chicago interactive shop Designkitchen.

The acquisition brings Wunderman a 90-person operation specializing in Web design, strategy and customer relationship management. It will become part of Wunderman in Chicago, retaining the Designkitchen name.

Agency founder and CEO Sam Landers will report to Wunderman's Chicago president Rick Schreuder.

The acquisition is designed to strengthen the WPP Group direct agency's digital capabilities in a key "secondary market." Wunderman has made a series of acquisitions over the last year-plus to increase its digital heft. These include purchasing Blast Radius last October and six interactive firms in international markets. Wunderman also bought Web site optimization specialist Zaaz in July 2006. Other digital shops in the Wunderman network include VML.

"Designkitchen helps us in our deliberate effort to expand our digital offering across every aspect of the customer experience," Wunderman CEO Daniel Morel said in a statement. "Doing so enables us both to offer clients the most diverse and effective ways of spurring a dialogue with their customers."

Designkitchen's clients include Bally Total Fitness, Coventry Health Care and Oprah's Angel Network.

Wunderman and Designkitchen have worked together previously for clients like Burger King and Butterball. For Burger King, the shops teamed on a promotion linking the fast food giant with boy band the Jonas Brothers.

Designkitchen, founded in 1992, had $7.5 million in revenue in 2007, according to WPP. The purchase price was not disclosed.