J. Walter Thompson (JWT) is joining forces with Melbourne indie agency Girl in an “alliance” set to bolster expertise and credentials of both agencies.
As part of the partnership, Girl staff will move into the JWT Melbourne offices to work closely with the agency’s team. Girl will retain its separate branding but operate within the agency as part of the team according to client demand.
Founded in 2000, the agency specialises in fashion, health and retail targeted at women. It has worked with a number of big Australian brands, including Priceline, Blackmores, Ezibuy and Mirvac.
JWT will offer Girl’s staff and clients access to a broader network and larger pool of talent, as the agencies work together on joint projects across the retail sector and beyond.
JWT MD Michael Godwin says the union was forged due to the skillset offered by the Girl team and its founders Elizabeth Wilmott and Jo Talbot, which complemented the agency's approach and its growing retail and fashion market offering.
“The growth we’ve enjoyed over recent years has been fueled by an ability to tailor our offer around each client’s needs. To do this, you need an office full of people with different backgrounds and skillsets, woven through the agency. Informed by the client need, we’re able to assemble teams consisting of shopper specialists, social specialists, retail specialists, data analysts and other discipline ‘experts’, all sitting side by side, collaborating within a single multi-disciplinary agency team," Godwin says.
He says that the health, retail and fashion sectors are becoming increasingly important and the deal with strengthen the agency's offering to existing clients.
"Over recent months, we’ve worked together on several client projects, and found that what each party brought to the table was a complementary set of skills. The clear winners have been our clients who benefited from the JWT/Girl union via the delivery of outstanding work, that if either party was working alone, we simply wouldn’t have been capable of," he says.
Speaking on behalf of the Girl Partners, Elizabeth Wilmott says the after a year of "dating", the agency decided to make it official with JWT to add scale to the agency.
"We met Michael and the JWT team around a year ago now and began the process of exploring whether we were right for each other. Beyond providing scale, we wanted to join forces with an agency that we felt to be culturally aligned; to share a similar ambition for the type of enduring client partnerships we seek to foster; and one we could help through our experience across particular client sectors, and vice versa," Wilmott says.
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