Creative and brand experience agency Akcelo has acquired POPULA as part of its continued growth, adding to its depth of specialist mobile-first expertise and experience.
The move comes from the close alignment between the two agencies and strengthens Akcelo’s offering in mobile, social and digital while adding senior industry expertise and leadership from inside Meta and Google.
Founded in 2023 by Jay Morgan and Mitchel O’Donohue, POPULA was created to help brands make advertising built for a mobile-first world. By joining Akcelo, POPULA’s expertise will be combined with Akcelo’s global scale across Sydney, Melbourne, Vancouver, London and LA to deliver stronger brand experiences for clients.
“Akcelo creates work that moves at the speed of culture. Bringing POPULA into the business is not just about deepening our capability, but accelerating our creative model for the future,” said Aden Hepburn, CEO of Akcelo.
“Jay and Mitch bring incredible pedigree and experience from leadership roles at Meta and Google that, combined with our scale and end-to-end capabilities, help to further forge our mission to create the most modern marketing agency in the world.”
As part of the integration, the POPULA team has joined Akcelo’s Sydney office. POPULA clients will continue to be serviced as usual, with the added benefit of Akcelo’s broader bench of capabilities across creativity, technology, CX, production, experiential and AI. For Akcelo’s existing client partners, the acquisition brings deeper expertise in mobile-first creativity and social storytelling cross-platform.
“We started POPULA to create ideas that connect with people where they are today. During our times at Google and Meta we consistently heard from Australia’s biggest brands that they felt they weren’t making the most of the opportunity to connect their brand with where culture happens today. From day one, our goal has been to make advertising that works with the way people actually use platforms,” commented Morgan.
“Joining Akcelo means we can keep that focus while scaling it to new levels, which is a really exciting step for us and for the brands we work with. We’re thrilled we’ve already been able to deliver the benefits to new clients.”
