Akcelo has been named the global agency of record for London-based kids’ audio company, Yoto, following a competitive pitch process.
It marks the first major win for its new London office and, in an exclusive chat with B&T, CEO Aden Hepburn and the agency’s London-based strategy partner Ben Phillips told us why this win reflects Akcelo’s truly global ambitions.
“This is the big, hairy, audacious part of the dream we set out to achieve when we founded Akcelo back in 2020,” Hepburn told B&T, in between flights in the US.
“We were confident our Brand Experience model and modern capability had truly global potential with a super diverse set of capabilities being built organically from the inside out, we knew it would stand out against the world of large-scale mergers and cultural mashups the hold-cos were starting to have to deal with… and fast forwarding to today, we see it coming true.”
The ride from Akcelo’s headquarters in Redfern to this point has been rapid. Hepburn founded the agency in 2020 alongside head of strategy and innovation Dave Di Veroli, Sydney managing partner Miles Scott, design director Mark Berry, and chief growth officer Peter Collins.
It now lists McDonald’s, TikTok, PepsiCo, Asahi, Tinder, Spotify and OpenAI among its clients across a variety of markets and for different scopes of work. For instance, it works with TikTok in more than 20 countries. Yesterday, Akcelo became Virgin Australia’s social media agency. Today, Yoto has joined this who’s who of clients.
“Being blessed with a roster of incredible global brands, it feels like we have the potential to be as global as we are local, and these are the green shoots we always dreamed of,” continued Hepburn.
“We always had a dream of creating a platform for talent to get exposure to global briefs and global clients without having to leave Australia and have the opportunity to go abroad as part of Akcelo one day (we’ve moved a number of people around our offices globally now), so this expansion into the UK market really helps to bring that vision to life.”
Read more: ‘Doing Something Differently Was The Right Call’: Why Akcelo Could Be Your Next Agency
Yoto, if you aren’t familiar, makes screen-free, kid-friendly audio players. All a kid needs to do is insert the Yoto card into their Yoto Player or Yoto Mini device, and they can enjoy audiobooks and music. There’s everything from stories about Paddington Bear to a child-appropriate version of Cathy Freeman’s autobiography Born To Run and the soundtrack to Moana. They really take all comers.
Yoto devices are available to buy in Kmart stores exclusively across Australia. It has also inked partnerships with The Wiggles. According to reporting by The Growth Agenda last year, the boxes have proven popular with sales leaping 30 per cent month-on-month, while the brand reported a 400 per cent increase in July sales year-on-year. The business now employs more than 200 people and sells into 148 countries worldwide.
Akcelo’s job will be keeping that momentum going across Yoto’s key global markets, including the UK, US, Canada, France and Australia. The agency’s remit spans global brand strategy, creative platform development, integrated campaign executions, partnership integrations, hero events and activations. Hepburn also promised other “innovative” offerings down the track, too.
Akcelo offers clients a ‘Follow the Sun’ model, which allows work to be conducted across APAC, EMEA and North America.
“Not only do we have the local expertise and knowledge in each of those markets through our new and existing offices for Yoto [but] we also hire the very best talent in the world’s leading advertising markets outside our offices so we can deliver world class work and creative solutions at scale and speed regardless of how big our teams might be in any one office,” said Hepburn.
That model, he said, gives clients access to capabilities they might not otherwise have locally and gives Akcelo an offer that not too many indies can match.
“We’ve been building this model globally for clients like TikTok for a number of years now, and it’s paying dividends for Akcelo and our clients!” Hepburn said.
That broad scope of work is not by accident. Akcelo, as Hepburn mentioned before, believes in what it calls ‘Brand Experience’, an approach to creative work which recognises that consumers don’t experience the world or brands solely through 60-second TVCs or TikToks. Instead, it believes brands need an agency partner with experiential, CX, traditional creative, social and other capabilities to show up truly through-the-line.
“Akcelo has a lot of experience playing at a really exciting intersection of Technology, Entertainment and Fandom,” said Hepburn.
“And for us, that’s such a perfect opportunity for us to flex our capability on a brand like Yoto. They are as much a technology and product company as they are an Entertainment brand that creates incredible fandom. We’re both startups scaling globally in the same markets. So it felt like a perfect and very exciting fit.”
“This is a dream AOR for us,” added Phillips.
“All of the Akcelo team are Yoto households, and we live with the quiet but powerful (and often quite touching) impact it has on our children every day. To bring this to millions more around the world is something we’re really excited about.”
Yoto’s VP of growth, Sarah Martin, meanwhile, praised Akcelo’s “strategic strength” and its “genuine appreciation for what makes Yoto special”.
Akcelo and Yoto’s partnership is effective immediately, and initial work, handled by the London office, is already underway.
