Brothers Morris and Cameron Bryant started their own media agency with the goal of hanging out together, doing good work and making it home by 5.30 pm each day.
That was 11 years ago. Last week their independent agency Sparro was taken over by UK-based digital marketing agency Brainlabs.
The details of the payday for the brothers, who grew up in the Blue Mountains out of Sydney, haven’t been released but they are smiling and looking forward to being part of an expanding independent global agency group.
“We never thought we'd have staff and an office, let alone incredible tier one clients,” Morris Bryant told AdNews.
“Now we have 120 staff and this (deal) is blowing our minds a little bit.
“But we're incredibly grateful for everything on the way; the people and clients who played a part in. We're just pretty simple Blue Mountains boys.”
Sparro had been working on projects with Brainlabs, which has more than 1,000 staff spread across the UK, US and now Australia, for a couple of years.
The acquisition idea took hold about a year ago. “We had looked at acquiring other services and opening overseas ourselves,” Morris Bryant said.
“Ultimately, it just made sense to merge with someone that's got some momentum in other markets. And that gives us a continuation of the vision and values that we stand for, and believe what we believe. They probably were going to enter this market regardless.”
The deal is an example of a shift in acquisitions in recent years, from the big holding companies acquiring independents to big indies absorbing smaller, successful independents.
Simon Ryan’s RyanCap, founded in 2020, was bought by French digital strategy group Labelium in November last year. Its 70 plus went with the deal as did RyanCap company brands Ryvalmedia, a digital-first marketing and media buying specialist, Foxcatcher, a marketing and media data specialist offering data and technology-based media tools and services, and Tightrope, a business strategy consultancy.
Australia, representing a large piece of the Asia-Pacific market, has a healthy independent agency sector.
“Indies like ourselves and others have really grown to the scale to challenge some of the bigger agencies,” Morris Bryant said. “We are a realistic option for significant tier one and tier two clients.”
Daniel Gilbert, the now New York-based founder of Brainlabs, sees Australia as a great advertising market.
“Some of the most interesting work that's come out of our space has come from Australia,” he told AdNews.
“There's a kind of Aussie theme to it. That combination between brand and creative, between brand and performance, and that kind of integration of creative and media, has roots, and certainly some of the finest examples, in the Australian market.
“Our ambition is to be truly global and create a genuine alternative to the network media agencies, so we will add more territories.
“It just so happens that we've got some connections into the Australian market and we knew Cam and Morris for some time and had been observing their work and had multiple connections into them via mutual contacts.
“We really respect and trust them. And I think in an acquisition, you are looking for cultural fit at a leadership level, and at company level, and it just felt like a really great coming together of two companies.
“I wouldn't say it was pure opportunism. It was a long time in the making, a combo of innovative work plus great match. When you can get those things right then you've got to pounce and make it happen. It's fantastic.”
He sees a thriving independent ecosystem in Australia, with Sparro at the forefront.
“The work that they're doing is up there with the behemoths. This stuff is outstanding,” he said.
“And we hope we can be part of opening that up to an even bigger platform with clients in other markets and wider media briefs. That's the plan, to take that and try and scale it up.”
The brothers from the Blue Mountains have managed, despite getting bigger, to maintain their original goals of hanging together and getting home at a decent time.
In 2021, they acquired independent creative agency and production company Jack Nimble, which last year won three awards at the AdNews Agency of the Year, including Small Agency and Content Agency,
Sparro & Jack Nimble this year are finalists for Digital Agency of the Year and Employer of the Year at the AdNews Agency of the Year awards to be announced next month.
“We've been able to work on major clients and build our business around them and build products that anticipate what they're going to want next,” Morris said.
“The expectations we had for ourselves, we’ve also had for our people, to put their learning development first and still walk out the door at 5.30.
“We have a revenue share program in place. We have a 20 week leadership course. We do whatever we can to give our people the best opportunity.
“We think that's the right thing to do. We want to be the business that gives young people an opportunity, a start.
“Also people are our product and if they're not happy, content, learning, developing, then they're not really bringing the full product back to our clients.”
It’s that independent spirit that attracted Brainlabs.
“You see that in conversation with Morris and Cam, Adam and Angus, you see that in in conversation with them,” said Daniel Gilbert in New York,
“A real independent spirit, which I call analogous to entrepreneurialism, a desire to get up and do something.
“On that cultural piece, that’s really aligned with how we think about culture and media at the same time, which high performance, getting people to express the highest version of themselves and producing media that performs.
“The world of media for the last 30 years has kind of been stuck in this colouring-in department, wishy washy metrics.
“We believe in the power of media to perform and in a measurable way,
“The right measurement framework, and the right kind of data capability, which Sparrow has in spades, there's a new dawn of media coming where you can measure that stuff and you can connect it to revenue, EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortisation), shareholder value.
“And a lot of that is coming out of Australia, a lot of great work with economic metrics, data modelling and data science.”
He sees the opportunity at the intersection of brand and performance.
“And actually breaking down what I think is a false dichotomy between brand and performance, and calling it brandformance, where you apply a data driven methodology to all media.
He doesn’t think this is shelf marketing, where a consumer is already in the market, looking for something and they are being shown an ad at the time.
“It's applying data driven rigour, technical enablement, applying discipline and data science to build brands in that way.
“I think most brands now are going to have to have a slightly different way of building their brand.
“And you're already seeing that in the way that something like eight out of the top ten beauty brands have been built with social first content.
“The Sparro guys and Jack Nimble, the social first creative combined with the digital first media, is just a stunning combo.
“There's a whole raft of digital first brands that are jumping on that train and realising how much you can get with a digital first approach.
“We're definitely seeing opportunity. We're small enough and humble enough and we can't talk about ourselves in terms of market share yet.
“But my message to the whole company and our businesses is we're smart enough and nimble and hungry enough. We should be able to grow in a recession, in a downturn in ad spend.”
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