When EssenceMediacom says that “Breakthrough thinking drives everything we do”, it isn’t messing around.

Merging two large businesses is hard enough (more than three quarters ultimately fail). But nailing to the mast a fresh culture and leadership team, as well as rolling out a new and successful market positioning, the “Breakthrough Agency’s” performance really caught the eye in 2024.

Pippa Berlocher took the helm of EssenceMediacom in 2023 and hit the ground running, recruiting new senior playing staff, including chief product officer Matt Scotton, Sydney MD Stevie Douglas-Neal and investment Sarah James, to complement what was already a solid leadership team.

The team has been busy winning new business, most notably the Specsavers account (worth $51.6 million according to COMvergence), while retaining one of its largest accounts, the $78 million-rated Queensland Government work as well as the NRL. Its only notable loss was Stockland. 

EssenceMediacom is an industry leader on diversity in leadership (58 per cent female) and possesses a low gender median gap and a low churn rate. That should be no surprise given diversity is at the heart of EssenceMediacom’s hiring practices, with the agency also championing meaningful causes, contributing more than $13 million in pro-bono media value for Do It For Dolly Day to support anti-bullying efforts across Australia.

Underlying EssenceMediacom’s ‘breakthrough’ season is the silverware it has picked up along the way.

This includes two B&T Awards, including Media Agency of the Year, four Cairns Crocodiles, five MFAs and an Effie Award. That trophy haul made it one of the most awarded media agencies of 2024.

The icing on the cake is EssenceMediacom’s remarkable rise on RECMA’s qualitative report rankings, which assesses agency performance. It is now joint-first with OMD on 21 points, and well up on its 2022 H2 score of four.