Akcelo

Momentum. That’s the word that our advisory panel returned to consistently when describing Akcelo — apt indeed, if you know your Esperanto.

But Akcelo’s continued progression in Australia and latterly around the world should make for worrying reading for the bosses of rival agencies.

In 2025, it won more than 25 new pieces of business across a variety of scopes of work.

These included significant wins in World Rugby, for which it developed the global campaign and design for the 2027 Rugby World Cup; Queensland Airports, for which it is creative agency of record; Cannon, for which it manages shopper and events marketing; and OpenAI, for which it runs campaigns and events.

It also won and onboarded Virgin Australia in October, with Akcelo serving as its social agency of record. This win, however, would not be reported publicly until June 2026 — we’re resisting from making a joke about flights running late.

Its largest clients remain McDonald’s, TikTok and PepsiCo, an enviable roster to be sure. Impressively, the Redfern-headquartered band expanded its work with all three during the year — “substantially” so in the case of McDonald’s. It also lost no accounts during 2025, though it had no accounts to defend, either.

Its relationship with a number of clients spans many many countries. It has offices in Vancouver, Los Angeles, Bali and most recently London to help service clients with a follow-the-sun model.

There remains a pernicious perception in the market that Akcelo exists as either ‘just’ a digital and CX or experiential agency. That’s not right.

Brand and creative work now accounts for the largest chunk of the agency’s revenue. Even if it were ‘just’ a digital, CX, experiential agency that isn’t a bad thing, either. Given the relative decline in prominence (and perhaps effectiveness, too) of traditional advertising, perhaps it’s far from a bad thing.

Akcelo hasn’t finished, however. In September 2025, it acquired POPULA, a mobile-first creative specialist founded by former Meta and Google leaders Jay Morgan and Mitchel O’Donohue. It said the move strengthened its platform-native storytelling. It also won a suite of awards around Australia and the world, notably for its work for Macca’s, which saw it win a Bronze Australian Effie and two Bronze AWARD Awards . Together with OMD, it even landed the Cairns Crocodiles Grand Prix for its ‘Squid Games’ campaign.

It’s also offering some quite compelling staff propositions, too. Through its ‘Personal Akceloration Program’, ‘SHIFT’ leadership training and development budgets, it has invested some $500,000 in training. And 80 per cent of its leadership has been promoted from within. It’s also certified Carbon Neutral, told us it is powered by 100 per cent green energy and it rolled out an EV leasing program for employees.

All told, it was another very impressive year for Akcelo, though perhaps not quite as remarkable by its own lofty standards as previous years when it was crowned B&T’s Agency of the Year.