While an unlikely combination across most agencies, Atomic 212° has found success with the melding of the trading and strategy functions for campaign effectiveness, team engagement and client happiness.
Atomic212°'s chief strategy officer, Asier Carazo, said that in every other agency he has worked at, there's always been that silo between the two teams, but nowadays the strategy team needs to be closer to trading more than ever.
"Strategy comes up with the ideas, but you need to know you can execute them, and if you want to be first in market, you want to stand out and you need someone who's going to give you the intel of what's new and what's happening," he said.
"Lorraine [Woods, chief investment and trading officer] and I catch up very often – we’re very good friends and we work very well together, but on top of that, we have scheduled catch ups to understand what's coming up, what do I and my team need to be aware of and how can we push the client a little bit harder on trying new channels and formats."
Carazo said one benefit that the 100% Australian-owned indie possesses is that there's no parent company in New York or London telling the local team on the ground what the product needs to be like.
"I know that the case in big agencies, because I used to be a global strategist for many years at Havas, and I was telling the markets how they needed to do their job," he told AdNews.
"We have the trust from the partners to be like ‘do whatever you want and shape it however you want’, so Lorraine and I and Tom Sheppard [GM of media technology] and Rory Heffernan [national MD] all work incredibly closely together to just reinvent the product literally every year or every six months."
It's been a busy year for Atomic 212° on the pitch front, having most recently won Great Wall Motor's media account, effective as of December.
That adds to previous pickups including the media planning and buying accounts of BlueScope Australia, Darrell Lea, Northern Territory Major Events Company and VetPartners, Adyen and UKG.
Carazo said that there's currently a lot of appetite for change in the market and the agency happens to be on the right side of it.
"The reason why we're having such a great success rate is because whatever we do, we do it differently and we do it genuinely, so there's that very human approach," he said.
"The market is great at the moment and the phone keeps ringing, but we don't have a cookie cutter approach - we use every single one of our new business opportunities to reinvent or improve whatever we're putting forward in market. We've never reutilised a presentation or an approach for one client versus another; it’s all bespoke."
Looking more broadly at the wider advertising market, Woods - who took on her new role two months ago - said that while it's definitely a tough market at the moment, some clients are faring better than others.
"We’ve got some clients that are coming in with upweights and taking advantage of the opportunities that exist and then,we've got some clients that are maybe going a little bit quieter in order to catch their breath a bit," she said.
"I think we see we're in a really fortunate position with the wins that we're having and the client sets that we have where, over the last few years, we have felt that they've been relatively stable with their budgets."
Carazo agreed that while the agency isn't seeing big cuts in client budgets across the board, it is seeing more scrutinising of how the money is spent.
"Our main USP has always been very ROI driven; we tell our clients ‘we won't spend a single dollar until we can tell you what it's going to deliver’," he said.
"There's that trust from our clients to, from their side, keep spending and from our side, being able to arm them with whatever they need to go back to their CFOs and say ‘media is still incredibly important, here's why we need to be investing’.
With a national team of close to 170 people, Carazo said that the growth experienced in recent years is exciting, as despite being Australia's largest independent media agency with offices across Sydney, Melbourne, Darwin and Brisbane, it's managed to retain a family business feel.
"I think the fact that we're growing hasn't really changed the vibe because we're growing quite balanced across offices, so it’s still fairly manageable, and then there's great opportunities for the offices to connect on a weekly basis," he told AdNews.
Woods said that people are what ultimately makes a business.
"Everyone's got something different to bring to the table and we've got a really, really good bunch of people," she said.
"I've been here for eight years and that growth hasn't felt overwhelming or daunting or like we're losing ourselves or losing connection with one another.
"It just feels like we're getting bigger and more energised and it's probably another reason why we win as well, because new people are coming in, new thinking is coming in and we have that freedom and flexibility to showcase what that is."
Carazo said that the agenda into 2025 is focused around continuing to improve and finessing the product around smarter, faster, more accountable media.
"The media usually reports how we win new clients, but it’s also about maintaining some of the strongest relationships in the market - as an example, Origin has been with us for 10 years and Bupa for five years," he said.
"I think if we were only growing and then leaving our clients abandoned, we wouldn't be doing a good job, but our clients tell us they can't even feel when we're pitching.
"That's a measure of success, because it means that we still have senior people available for them, including myself and Lorraine. I've seen in many agencies where the C suite disappears because they are on big pitch and that's when things start falling off."
Woods said that the next 12 months will be focused on growth for Atomic 212°'S clients in navigating what can be a tricky landscape at times and how the agency can help them to find the right solution.
"Reinventing our products in order to deliver that is exciting, but ensuring that what we do is having an impact on our clients businesses is so important too," she said.
Alexandra Thomas, National Trading Lead
What attracted you to Atomic?
The way in which they are winning all this new business, I wanted to be part of it!
What’s the biggest challenge in your role?
Navigating the current market landscape with new and changing privacy regulations, social media age restrictions, evolving category limitations, smaller budgets and transformation in measurement and data.
What do you love most about your role?
Being at the forefront of the media budgets, as I love the analysis and the negotiation! Being smart with stretching investment and unlocking value for our clients while delivering positive ROI.
Emily Wilson, Senior Strategist
What’s the biggest challenge in your role?
Trusting the process is the biggest challenge in our team. Most strategists will agree that embarking on a new strategic response can be an emotional rollercoaster. You’ll often start a project without an immediate answer, and it can feel like your efforts aren’t matching your output. I can tell you; this is unlike any other job I’ve had! Discovering the perfect hook or narrative that will make a media response crystal clear requires deep thinking, which often takes time—something we're all short of in our fast-paced industry. However, that ‘lightbulb’ moment every strategist hopes for will eventually strike, and the story you want to tell will naturally come together.
What do you love most about your role?
The things you struggle with the most often lead to the biggest payoff when you finally reach the finish line. Nothing feels better than guiding a team and a client through a strategic response and seeing a lot of head nodding. You know you’ve done your job well when your strategic response is clearly understood by your audience, and you have data and insights that are hard to disagree with.
What attracted you to Atomic?
From my very first interview, it comes down to the people of Atomic 212 having “good vibes” and the career progression that Atomic 212 has to offer. I have been given the opportunity to gain extra education, mentorship, promotions and a pathway into strategy which has given me so much career growth over the past eight years. I think it’s a testament to there being so many “long-timers” in the agency who are coming up to long service leave, which is pretty much unheard of in agency land!
Jay Malig, National Trading Lead
What does a typical day look like for you?
One of the best traits about my role is that my day-to-day work life can vary greatly. I could be managing annual contract negotiations for a Melbourne client one day, helping a Sydney team with their media buying audit the following day, work with Lorraine on a new business pitch the day after that, and then go to Darwin for a client presentation the next week. While it’s a media equivalent of spinning plates, it does keep things varied and interesting.
What do you love most about your role?
I’m leaning towards the variety but, in this case, it’s the people I work with. I get to work with all our client teams across all our offices, which means I get to work with many brilliant people and look forward to seeing them in person whenever the opportunity arises. Working with Lorraine, Ash and Barry, and helping the business grow and achieve great results for our clients is also something I really enjoy about my role.
What’s the biggest challenge in your role?
Because my role involves helping and advising all client teams across our agency, one of my biggest challenges involve keeping myself up to date with a media industry that’s constantly evolving. Particularly regarding media planning and trading, understanding major developments before or just as they arrive, and then advising and helping our teams adapt these changes so we are set up for continued success.
Sam Bessell, Senior Strategist
What are you focused on for 2024?
More than 80% of the ocean has never been mapped or seen by humans and sadly, similar could be said for marketers’ most essential insights. Hence, this year my focus is evolving SONAR, Atomic 212°’s new market research solution for brands wanting to survey the depths of their marketing performance, consumer behaviour, or more uncharted territories. Having proudly launched this calendar year, our services have entered the waters of many of our most trusted clients. Most notably, we’re conducting the brand tracking for BMW across Australia and New Zealand. It’s been a busy year.
What does a typical day look like for you?
Sometimes I feel like a street performer. It’s a juggling act; A balance of project management, data crunching and analysis, critical and creative thinking, and formulating strategies for our client portfolio. A typical day involves having many email chains, result dashboards, spreadsheets, presentation decks, and industry reports open simultaneously. It’s challenging, but like a smiling audience after a successful street performance, the positive outcomes are rewarding.
What do you love most about your role?
Offering understanding. I enjoy being a bridge between people and brands - carrying brands into the world of their consumers. As a market researcher and strategist, I give marketers more visibility on their audience's passion and pain points and a stable pathway to enhance or resolve them in media. It comes with great responsibility, but I take pride in being a structural piece of the marketing puzzle.
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