(This article first appeared in the Adnews magazine. Subscribe HERE)
Adam Wise and Angus Mullane, the founders of social-first agency Jack Nimble, received a mysterious phone call early in 2021.
“At first, we thought they were trying to sell us something so we’ll admit we tried to politely brush them off to begin with,” they tell AdNews.
“However, they insisted on a meeting, wanting to know more about Jack Nimble. Luckily we ended up taking the meeting because it turned out to be an M&A advisor who told us an agency was interested in acquiring Jack Nimble.”
A blind lunch date shortly followed with the interested agency, which turned out to be Sparro, the large independent digital agency founded by Morris and Cameron Bryant in 2013. Last year, Sparro doubled in size, with more than 80 staff and managing $120 million in ad spend for 70 brands including Webjet, Temple & Webster, Estee Lauder Companies and Catch Group.
“There were plenty of sparks flying at that lunch, and it all just made complete sense for us to be working together,” say Wise and Mullane.
Wise and Mullane founded Jack Nimble in 2017, specialising in short-form, social-first content.
The focus and vision worked, with brands such as American Express, eBay, Gumtree, Tourism Australia, humm and HelloFresh coming onboard.
In 2019, they won AdNews Small Agency of the Year, an award for those with a staff count under 25.
And now they’ve just won AdNews Content Agency of the Year. The judges: “It’s all in the name — the way it works is nimble, a small agency with big impact.”
Wise: “Angus and I started Jack Nimble because we saw a gap in the market for a social-first creative agency and production company hybrid.
“Our vision from day one has been to make the best social content in Australia. We’ve been laser focused on that for the past four years, and we’ve been fortunate enough to work with some incredible clients along the way.
“But to get us closer to living up to our vision, we knew we had to bring social-first creative, production and media together under the one roof.
“So when Sparro came knocking on our door thinking the same thing, it was love at first sight. We’re really looking forward to working with them to bring our shared vision to life.”
Several sessions followed between the Bryant brothers and the Jack Nimble founders to learn more about each other’s businesses.
Jack Nimble: “Once we knew that it was a good match, we turned to a friend and mentor of ours, who had recently been through an acquisition himself, for advice. This led to him becoming our advisor. We’d never been through anything like this before so it was really great to have someone we trusted guiding us through the process.
“From then on it was a matter of coming to an agreement that suited both Jack Nimble and Sparro. Thankfully, on the key points, we both wanted the same things.
“We wanted to push ourselves to make even better work and drive better outcomes for our clients, and we didn’t want to change the brand or what we were known for. So the process was relatively smooth as far as an acquisition goes (or so we’re told!).
Sparro: “The founders of both sides had several vision sessions together, looking for ideas for both sides and how we might complement each other. At each session, we felt more and more that we were cooking something good together. We really enjoyed hanging out with the guys and that extended to their team as we began to bring them into the conversations, as well.
“It was important to us to begin working together immediately, even before signatures. It meant that while we’re only a few months in, formally, we’ve already got case studies, know how each side works, and we’re in the same building getting the teams together.”
Sparro had been familiar with the Jack Nimble agency and its work for some time. “They’ve got an incredible name in the market so they were our starting point and benchmark. Once we got together to break bread it was obvious that we had a buzz and it all fell into place from there.”
Sparro co-founder Cam Bryant said Jack Nimble’s award-winning work and passion for short-form, social-first content made the partnership
a perfect fit.
“Data erosion, automation and the low barrier to start marketing online means the ‘we’re here’ type marketing of the past is finished. You need to say something, resonate and create actual brand impact. We’re taking that approach and applying performance principles with measurement, testing and innovation.
“Having worked with Jack Nimble in the past, we know just how much value and impact they can drive by operating at this intersection of data, creative and media. You can have the best creative, or the best media, but neither can work in isolation, and if either are ineffective, you are going to see a poor performing campaign. As the industry adapts to data privacy changes, this will ring even more true.”
What was the key that got it across the line?
Jack Nimble: “We’re very proud of the brand we’ve built in such a short period of time, so keeping the Jack Nimble brand and ethos was very important to us.
“Another important factor was trust. The Bryant brothers made it very clear that they weren’t looking to change things, they just wanted to enable us to do our thing and with improved data insights/capability.
“Being a family-run business was a big selling point for us. The two brothers run the business, their mum does the bookkeeping, their dad does the IT — there was just something really sweet about that for us. It’s something you wouldn’t see at a traditional big agency. And I think that family vibe extends to their staff as well. They genuinely treat their people well.”
Sparro: “There was no line — for Morris and I, these guys were it. They love what they do, they’re good, honest people, and we knew we were onto something with them. Being able to spend so much time with other founders has been amazing, too — we’ve been through so much of the same things — not just on the business side, but everything else that goes with it.”
The blind date became permanent in November 2021. The deal (with commercial details confidential) will make Sparro a 90-person business forecast to reach 33% YoY growth for the 2022 financial year.
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