2025 AGENCY SCORECARDS
akcelo
Team PROFILE
Agency type
creative and brand experience
Ownership
independent
tagline
We Build Brands For the Experience Era
LEADERSHIP TEAM
Aden Hepburn
TEAM CAPTAIN
Miles Scott
Chief Operations Officer
Louise McQuat
Global Executive Creative Director
Dave Di Veroli
chief strategy officer
Jayde Smith
Group Director of Technology
Britt King
Events & Activations Director
Cam Gage
Experience Director
KEY STATS
offices
Sydney, melbourne
HEADCOUNT
161 (inc 54 freelancers)
gender balance
male 52%, female 48%. Leadership: male 50%, female 50%.
CLIENT WINS
15
CLIENT RETENTIONS
n/a
LARGEST CLIENTS
mcconald's
tiktok
pepsico
TROPHY CABINET
B&T Awards
4
B&T's season report
Akcelo entered 2024 with confidence and by season’s end, it had proven it could deliver on the big stage.
The agency took home the B&T Awards Grand Prix, alongside Experiential/Promotional Agency of the Year, Independent Agency with more than 50 employees and NSW Agency of the Year.
The wins reflected a year of creative and commercial growth.
Akcelo picked up 15 new accounts, including Anytime Fitness, Great Northern Brewing Co., SPC, Beam Suntory and TAC, while retaining 100 per cent of its existing client base.
On the work front, Akcelo delivered a slate of standout campaigns.
For McDonald’s, the agency rolled out ‘Dare to Play’ for McDonald’s, an immersive entertainment partnership that fused the Netflix hit Squid Games with happy meal boxes with a bespoke mobile game and street-level activations, tapping into pop culture at just the right moment.
Forty Winks saw a fresh take on its long-running ‘Serious About Sleep’ platform through the ‘Go To Better Sleep’ campaign, injecting humour and relevance into the retail brand’s positioning.
Meanwhile, Gatorade’s ‘Water Wasn’t Made for This’ was a bold global play, reframing water as the competition and influencing the sports drink giant’s positioning well beyond Australian borders.
These efforts were part of a stellar season that saw Akcelo’s work run in 26 countries.
The agency delivered 25 per cent year-on-year growth, and maintained its carbon-neutral status, all while investing heavily in culture, training for the AI era and emerging talent programs.
Internally, the agency’s culture was anchored by a strong emphasis on people, inclusion, and long-term capability building.
This commitment extended to nurturing diverse perspectives and ensuring emerging talent had opportunities to step up, strengthening both the agency’s culture and its creative output.
Akcelo had a blinder in 2024.
HIGHLIGHTS REEL
McDonald’s – Dare to Play (Squid Game)
We’re proud of this campaign because it redefined what brand partnerships in entertainment should look like. In a world where Gen Z and Millennials dodge traditional advertising, we helped Macca’s cut through – not by interrupting culture, but by becoming part of it. Teaming up with one of the most iconic shows of the decade – Squid Game, we launched a bold, end-to-end brand experience: fan-first meal boxes, an immersive mobile game, and real-world activations that turned heads on the street and took over social feeds. The results? Sell-out meals, off-the-charts engagement, and a fanbase hungry for more. A cultural crossover so successful, it’s now held up as a global benchmark inside the McDonald’s system.
Forty Winks – Go To Better Sleep Campaign
We are proud of this campaign because it re-energised a legacy brand facing huge challenges from new digital D2C brands and established players like IKEA. We did this by reinventing their long-standing ‘Serious About Sleep’ platform through the lens of all the ways that people have poor sleep, with a light-hearted tone. The zombie-like ‘Unslept’ and the smart Forty Winks experts created a fun-filled story-telling approach to the brand that lived in every channel from in-store to TV to retail campaigns and beyond.
Gatorade – Water wasn’t made for this Campaign
We are proud of this campaign because it reframed the competitive set and gave Gatorade a leadership position in the category.
By making an enemy of water, Gatorade were able to showcase their huge competitive product advantage in an energetic and dramatic way that unlocked innovative media placements and activations. Akcelo’s repositioning of the brand is now being adopted by markets overseas.
akcelo's ANALYSIS
2024 was the year Akcelo proved the future of brand building isn’t just coming — it’s already here.
We delivered bold, game-changing work for global icons including McDonald’s, TikTok, PepsiCo, Amazon, Tinder and PlayStation.
We achieved 25 per cent revenue growth, retained 100 per cent of our clients, and expanded our team by 15 per cent.
We doubled down on what matters — maintaining Carbon Neutral operations, launching an EV program, championing DEI with 50:50 gender leadership, and investing in emerging talent through our ESOP and LAUNCH initiatives.
The year culminated in a defining moment: Akcelo won the B&T Awards Grand Prix — a title traditionally reserved for ad agencies.
We also took home Experiential Agency of the Year, Independent Agency and NSW Agency of the Year, making us the most
awarded agency of the night.
At just four years old, Akcelo isn’t just growing — we’re setting the standard for what the modern agency should be.
mvp award
Louise McQuat, Global Executive Creative Director
Awarded our Akcelorator of the Year, a reflection of her commitment, contribution and impact across our clients, culture and growth.
B&T's agency score
akcelo: 9
Previous season’s score: N/A
COACH's COMMENT:
Akcelo has had a record-breaking season by its standards setting benchmarks in the delivered a PBs in growth, creativity and silverware. B&T’s Grand Prix winner is on fire.
