Jake Ford's 'upside down' agency

Jake Ford, the former managing partner of Clemenger Group’s Traffik, has launched a full-service agency, Reconnected.  

Reconnected’s model is tailored to strike long and short marketing balance through a bottom-up orientation and the power of a full-service agency. 

The agency is built to help marketers frustrated by over-investment in activation marketing implement more balanced and effective work. 

The team has been designed to embrace commercial realities and use more effective short-term activation as an enabler for long-term brand building. 

Ford said what makes Reconnected different is its strategic intent and focus on pragmatic solutions. 

“When you set an agency up with the intent to be a true strategic marketing partner, you need to take a different point of view on how marketing can be a value driver for a business with the context of what the business considers valuable,” said Ford. 

“That's already leading us into some interesting creative solutions, but also solutions that come across a bit more pragmatic, which hopefully puts our clients in a position where we're setting them up to own the future demand of a business which changes the relevance of marketing.

“That's the ambition. We have various degrees of achieving that, but I think that's going to end up being up one difference.” 

Reconnected is a full service agency with a bottom-up orientation. That means, says Ford, it's got all the capabilities from a production perspective expected from a full service agency, but its strategic and creative perspective comes from however the business defines value.  

“We built it sales-out, so fundamentally working out the buying situations for businesses and making sure brand platforms, creative ideas - as a primary function, serve value to the business for sales,” he said. 

“Then as a secondary function, it can extend ideas around platforms and campaigns into those brand areas.  

“It's probably upside down, how most other full-service brand agencies approach it, which is focused on getting the brand right in the first place. We're going the opposite way.” 

Ford said his impetus to start a new agency was born out of the pandemic, where he – like many others – had to let go of a lot of people. 

“We had to think about what's our pivot. So I went deep down the rabbit hole and was tasked by the executive to be the lead on bouncing back out of this and what should the positioning be?  

“Essentially, I uncovered what the Reconnected positioning is throughout that work. That bottom up thinking of ‘you need to nail short and then buy time for the long’ really sings in that but people in specialist agencies typically aren't thinking in that space there.

“I was forced to actually dive into some of the more brand-focused marketing academia, which I then thought 'I could action a lot of this'." 

From knowing other above-the-line agencies, Ford noted those companies are essentially screaming for more brand money. 

“The only way you're ever going to get that out of a CEO is by making sure your short is absolutely hammering and you've got time and trust and investment in your brand. 

Ford said the reason he then went to start Reconnected was to deliver on that insight. For a full-service agency in a group dynamic, it would’ve meant they had to horizontally integrate PR and better contract and sponsorship products, he says.  

“For things like that, we would be stepping on the toes of other agencies and it's certainly not to say that that dynamic has got anything wrong with it. 

“For some clients, it's perfect, but for what I think is needed to truly nail what this positioning is, you need a blank whiteboard and not the group dynamic of doing one thing and not certain other specialisms.” 

Ford spent almost a decade with Clemenger Group, predominantly with Traffik.  

The former group managing partner in Melbourne said the company spent 50% of the time servicing its own direct clients, and the other working closely with Clemenger BBDO and CHE Proximity as its activation agency. 

“My remit was running the Melbourne office, but then nationally around strategy and sponsorship,” said Ford.  

“I then jumped out of there almost a year ago and set up Reconnected.”