This week, B&T is highlighting the businesses that are set for a noteworthy 2025—or simply, the Ones To Watch. Yesterday we took a look at creative agencies and today it is the turn of media agencies. Tomorrow, we’ll be looking at brands.
In producing this list, B&T has considered Omnicom’s planned acquisition of IPG Mediabrands but not included it as a separate item because it still has to overcome regulatory hurdles and is unlikely to conclude until the latter parts of this year.
Accenture Song
One of the biggest media agency stories of 2024 was Accenture Song’s triple swoop of former Initiative CEO Melissa Fein, managing director Sam Geer and chief strategy and product officer Chris Colter. The trio have been changed with building Accenture Song’s media planning and strategy capabilities and have had several months to settle into the role.
This year B&T will be looking to see the impact Fein, Geer and Colts have on the industry, how this translates to new business success and how their plans to “reinvent media”, by using AI tools and senior strategic muscle, resonate with the market. They’ve promised to remove “bloated staffing structures” and focus on high end strategic advice and efficiency, claiming the industry is ripe for disruption. We’ve heard similar things before about reinventing media planning and buying, but if anyone can deliver meaningful change and rapid growth, it is these three.
Atomic 212°
For years, Atomic 212° has had to bat off industry whispers that its founder and chair Barry O’Brien was looking to sell the large indy. Although discussion may (or may not) have taken place, Atomic 212 turned the story on its head by acquiring the media buying arm of KWPX. Few outside of the business saw this coming. This added 23 staff at offices in Adelaide and Perth, and clients including Coopers Brewery, RAA, OTR, S.O. Asher and The Jewellery Group.
Atomic 212° has also begun a new leadership era with Rory Heffernan succeeding CEO Claire Fenner, who had been pivotal to the agency’s growth. Last year the agency picked up nine new clients including Haval, Bluescope, Darrell Lea and Intuit, and continues to outperform the market in terms of growth. It will be interesting to see how the agency fares under Heffernan, Atomic 212’s first employee who joined the business in 2010. His leadership will be vital in helping Atomic 212° continue its growth trajectory and take advantage of its new national footprint.
Half Dome
2024 was quite the year for the Melbourne headquartered Half Dome. The agency was the top ranked indie in the first three quarters of the COMvergence new business report. The agency notched up several wins, including Australian Builders Network, Online Education Services and the digital account for specialist insurance provider NTI Limited. The agency also expanded its remit for GMHBA and Frank Health Insurance for SEO services.
In late 2023, Half Dome made the AFR’s Fast 100 list and the agency continues to punch well above its weight in this industry. The agency also bedded in a new brand positioning, ‘Half Dome, Whole Potential’, and continues to feature in best places to work lists. Half Dome was launched in 2017 by Tom Frazer, Joe Frazer and William Harms with a focus to work with challenger brands in Australia. It will be interesting to see what lies next for this challenger media agency brand, and whether it can continue the momentum it has built up over the past two years.
Hearts & Science
It’s fair to say that Hearts & Science has quite taken off in this market as it has in the US, UK and elsewhere, but this could be about to change. As B&T reported last May, Hearts merged with OMG stablemate Foundation, combining Omnicom Media Groups two smallest media shops. Combined they serve notable clients include Peloton, SBS, Hoyts, Diageo, HSBC and Mercedes.
The new leadership team is a combination of both agencies, featuring Jane Stanley, Liz Wigmore, Louis Mayne and Ashley Wong, as well as Melbourne GM Kylie Pascoe. Combining both of these agencies should provide Hearts & Science with the scale and smarts to grow its client base ahead of Omnicom’s acquisition of IPG Mediabrands. More than six months after Hearts and Foundation came together, expect this agency to appear on more pitch lists this year.
Howatson+Company & Innocean
Howatson+Company truly arrived on the media agency scene when it picked up the media planning and buying part of Honda Australia following a competitive pitch. The account had previously been with Zenith, who decided against re-pitching. Howatson+Company, which is primarily a creative agency, has been on a rapid ascent in recent years, cleaning up at last year’s B&T Awards, including Best Media campaign. Expect to see Howatson+Company in more agency reviews and offering full service solutions to clients.
Innocean is another creative agency that has expanded into media planning recently. In October, it launched a media planning and buying division, led by Kathryn Furnari, with foundation clients including Hyundai, Geotab and Sandhurst Fine Foods. They are another to keep an eye on in this space.
Initiative
The loss of Fein, Geer and Colter would have been keenly felt at Initiative. It’s hard enough replacing one excellent leader, let alone three. The agency lost large global clients Lego and Amazon, but in late November the agency promoted Sydney MD Jo McAlister to take the reins of the agency nationally. McAlister is widely respected by her agency peers and clients, and has instilled a challenger mindset back into the agency.
Initiative and its IPG Mediabrands stablemates have been on their own transformation journey, which involves automation and an overhaul of job roles and skills sets. Adding more uncertainty to the mix is that IPG is poised to be acquired by Omnicom. This makes it an interesting time for Initiative, which is trying to bed in a new leadership regime and mindset, and evolve how the agency operates before any potential post merger changes that might occur towards the tail end end of this year.
Mindshare
If 2024 was the year EssenceMediacom shone brightest, 2025 could be the year of the Good Growth agency. A finalist in last year’s B&T Awards, Mindshare is an agency that whispers rather than roars, but nonetheless it’s one of the most successful media shops out there. The agency had an incredible 2024, winning around 90 per cent of new business pitches plus retentions, including supporting GroupM OpenMind’s win of Nestle, Nike performance, Nova, Footlocker. It also won Unilever towards the end of 2023. Mindshare topped the recent COMvergence rankings.
Under the stewardship of CEO Maria Grivas, chief product officer Gavin Gibson and managing director of digital solutions Daniel Benton, Mindshare has pitched selectively and delivered sustainable growth for each clients. The agency has expanded its capabilities into new areas that match client needs like transformation, data and commerce. Its client vantage scores are among the highest in the industry and it consistently is among the frontrunners in Media-i scores as the agency most people want to work for.
PHD
Omnicom’s second largest agency had a solid 2024 in spite of losing one of its largest clients, Spotlight, to Nunn Media. It retained ANZ, Volkswagen Group, Asahi, Singapore Airlines and Hewlett Packard, while winning the likes of McCain. PHD remains rated ‘high’ on RECMA’s qualitative report, and the agency was one of the final two battling it out for the Australian Government master media services contract, which was eventually retained by UM.
After losing Unilever in late 2023 and Spotlight in early 2024, there had been market whispers that PHD was struggling, but its ability to retain important, large clients suggests otherwise. That said, there have been movements within the agency. Emma Wood has been promoted to Sydney investment lead, planning guru Alex Williams left for EssenceMediacom and was replaced by Elyse Foley, while Tess Eastcott left to lead the NAB account at Mindshare.
Omnicom’s acquisition of IPG Mediabrands, which is expected to be rubber stamped late this year, could lead to consolidation. How this plays out for PHD remains to be seen, but the agency will want to continue hitting runs in 2025 to ensure its brand stands out from what will be a crowded pack post merger.