Wavemaker, born out of a merger between two of the GroupM agencies, MEC and Maxus, is celebrating its five year anniversary.
The media agency has grown its Australian presence, bringing on key hires while winning new business and retaining notable clients, culminating in winning the Best Use of Content Award (sponsored by ACM) at the 2022 AdNews Agency of the Year Awards, in conjunction with Jack Nimble and Akcelo, for Netflix Australia’s Stranger Things meets Bondi Rescue.
AdNews spoke to Wavemaker ANZ CEO Peter Vogel, Wavemaker Brisbane MD Jane Sullivan and Wavemaker Melbourne MD Daniel Isaac.
Vogel said that there was a very purposeful decision to create a new brand.
“Our proposition was all around positive provocation, underpinned by that belief that there's always a better way to grow and growth is obviously what everyone is thirsty for - not only our clients, but our people as well," he said.
“That positive provocation flows through the whole business – a lot of our tools and processes have been designed to assist our clients grow their brands and their businesses and certainly a lot of our people initiatives are around growing our people, growing their careers and growing their capabilities.”
Wavemaker defines its Positive Provocation positioning as the idea that ‘what got you here, won’t get you there’, noting that they don’t provoke for the sake of it, but instead to create innovative and better outcomes for clients.
Vogel: “If you're looking at our client portfolio, we’ve got some great Australian businesses and iconic brands, we've got some big multinational clients and then a lot of the new economy clients have also looked to us to grow as well.
“We've got those new economy clients in all our offices – Swyftx, DoorDash, Netflix, Audible and more. These businesses operate quite differently and we can share those learnings across the businesses.
“Another highlight is that in the journey in creating this new brand, a lot of the senior talent in our business has remained in the business and been instrumental to the success.”
Wavemaker’s long-tenured team – including chief investment officer Philippa Noilea-Tani, chief content and partnerships officer Shivani Maharaj and chief growth and product officer James Hier with a total of more than 38 years between them at a mix of MEC, Maxus and Wavemaker – saw success in the agency leading the industry in new business and retention in 2022, according to RECMA.
RECMA ranked Wavemaker number one on estimated new business billings of AU$161 million for July 2021 to August 2022. The agency also won three AiMCO (Australian Influencer Marketing Council) Awards at the 2022 ceremony.
While Wavemaker as a whole has reason to celebrate, so do the teams based around the country - Sullivan said that the Brisbane business (pictured right) has gone from strength to strength after being built from scratch just over nine years ago, with Domino’s as the founding client.
“We're really lucky and thankful that we are still in a really strong partnership with Domino's nine years later; we've both been on the journey of growing our businesses.
“Their business continues to go from strength to strength and we’re ensuring that we're providing the right solutions and technology to ensure that they can talk to their customers and increase those sales across Australia and New Zealand.
“The other big thing that we’re really proud of here in Brisbane in particular is just the growth of our people. Nine years ago, it was just me here and we now have 40 people within the team and growth last year of over 30% here in Brisbane.”
That growth has also been reflected in a market like Melbourne, with Vogel saying he’s a firm believer in sustainable growth.
“Jane went from herself in Brisbane to 40 people. Daniel's business in Melbourne went from 25 people five years ago to 100 people today. It's all about bringing your existing people and your existing clients along on the journey.”
Wavemaker Melbourne's team
Being part of a larger network in GroupM – which also counts EssenceMediacom and Mindshare under its banner – provides tangible benefits, said Vogel.
Vogel: “It's wonderful to be able to draw on learnings from other markets, from great work from different people and different points of view. The other advantage is obviously the people and the development opportunities we’re able to provide; if we don't have the right growth opportunity in our agency, we can look to the wider group.
“Technology is driving a lot of our business and to be able to be at the forefront of developing new products that we might incubate in one market, but then we can share globally, is great.”
One example Vogel provided was Live Journeys, a product developed in Australia and has now rolled out through the global Wavemaker network.
Based on consumer journey information that has been built up for many years, Wavemaker’s database currently totals around 1.1 million consumer journeys across 86 categories across the world.
“What we did in Australia, to ensure that it’s more contemporary and live, is we've fused in a lot of the platform and publisher data into our purchase journey data. It's real time, it's getting updated, we can see what people are doing, what's influencing their decisions, how are they making these decisions, how they're operating online.
“We have big global partnerships with vendors and platforms and based on that, we can co-create proprietary opportunities for our clients and we can get priority access to certain data - there's a lot of benefits to scale.
“We often get asked ‘What's the difference between the GroupM agencies?’ and there's quite a fundamental difference in terms of our proposition, our cultures and the way we work, but GroupM supports the agencies and can provide that backbone for us to develop our point of view.”
Isaac said that it’s a “notable and positive decision” by GroupM to support the people and the brands they work for.
“I think that’s fantastic, because what the majority of clients are buying into is one of those brands - they're not buying necessarily into the network.
“They expect the network to support and provide value through scale, but they’re buying 
the personality of Wavemaker, or one or the other brands. For us, it allows us to really celebrate who we are and stand out in a pitch, which I think we do very well and the track record shows that.”
Sullivan (pictured right) praised the international mobility and flexibility that Wavemaker encourages, based on her own experience of working for MEC in London from 2004 to 2007 before returning to the company in Brisbane in 2014.
“It's something that I really encourage my young people to do. The last few years have been really hard for them to take that leap, but this year, I have three of them taking the journey over to the UK.
“We’re setting them up with amazing jobs, both within Wavemaker and GroupM, which is really exciting for us to keep awesome talent in the group and also know that they'll come home to us with that experience.
“A great example of that is James Lever, who had been with us for a couple of years and wanted to do the overseas experience. He headed over to Canada with Wavemaker back in February 2019, he returned after two years and he's now a group business director for us here and leading one of our key teams.”
Vogel says that Wavemaker’s positioning of ‘positive provocation’ is in itself a very positive statement, underpinned by Wavemaker’s behaviours of ‘knowledge, support and challenge’.
“To find a better way to grow, that has to come from deep knowledge of our clients’ businesses and how it works, deep knowledge of the consumer and deep knowledge of the media marketplace. It’s also about that support of knowing that good ideas will come from anywhere - if someone puts something forward and it doesn't work, that's fine, let's fail fast and then find a better way.
“The challenge comes in having that confidence to suggest or come up with a new way of doing things, so it's very much encapsulated in the way that we operate. The way we do it for clients is based on a deep understanding of customer experiences and how they make the purchase decisions.
“That comes from something we call Momentum, which is our customer journey database which we’ve made real time with live journey planning. That connects to Architect, which is an AI driven media planning technology.
“We can put in the brand task and the audience, and it will spit out the best way to engage with those people and we can use that to do scenario planning. All our tools and tech are on our operating system that everyone has access to around the globe and can work with to really fine tune and ensure that we can develop the best route to market for our clients that will generate that growth.”
Vogel says that a lot of organisations will plan using one data set or one audience and then will use a different data set to actually execute, but Wavemaker’s is connected from strategy all the way through to execution, so if they find a unique cohort in the marketplace, they can activate against that.
The ‘positive provocation’ that embodies Wavemaker’s thinking flows through into their planning process, named ‘provocative planning’ – defined by Wavemaker as ‘using the best in marketing science, developed through our extensive experience in growing Power Brands, and fusing it with the agile thinking and growth hacking, developed in partnership with our new economy challengers’.
Vogel: “There’s three modules to that – first, there's Unlock, which is a consultancy-grade audit of our clients own assets, how their consumers are engaging with them in the digital world; there's Transform, which is how we utilise our creativity and process to come up with plans that will transform their route to market to future-proof their brands; and then Maximise is the module that ensures that we get the most bang for the buck and where the media plans are absolutely spot on and generating that growth.”
Isaac (pictured below right) says that the success of that approach comes down to the fact that the proposition is actually “real”.
“I think there's a lot of salesmanship out there on some of these tools from some of our competitors. I've been really buoyed by the fact that everything that's on the front of the tin is in the tin when landing here.
“It's all deliverable, it's all live and it's not smoke and mirrors of data partnerships and the engine room being another company altogether. It’s future proofed, it's successful and it's working. The planner in me really found appeal in that, because it makes it a lot more palatable to take to clients and believe in the product because you can see it operating.
Sullivan: “I think that all of these tech and tools and data and systems that we provide both our people and our clients really underpins us wanting to be the most wanted agency.
“The new economy clients are pretty much all with us and that's because they can see the benefit of the tools and the technology and the investments that we're making to make it a more seamless planning process from planning through to execution as well as reporting and optimisation of that activity in real time.”
Vogel sees a noted divide in the market that ultimately provides opportunities for Wavemaker as an agency in the media buying and planning industry as 2023 goes on.
“Consumers have so many choices, not only in terms of products to buy, but media to consume. What's quite interesting is in many markets, there's some sort of rift - in Australia, we've got an interesting one in terms of age.
“There's a clear rift in terms of what the older audiences are consuming and what the younger audiences are consuming, so it's posing interesting challenges for clients. For the younger cohort, there's a lot of new platforms where they’re gathering information, and then the older cohort has still got a lot of purchasing power and are still engaging with the more traditional channels to get the information.
“For us, it's really exciting to have deep insights into the consumers, how they’re behaving and what they are referring to in order to help make their decisions. The other thing is addressability - you can hone into certain cohorts or audiences and really address them in a more personalised way, but also you can focus on postcodes, on suburbs, on people with a certain frame of mind, so it is really exciting.”
Sullivan said that from a planning perspective, it’s also about ensuring that Wavemaker’s people have a more holistic understanding of media as it all becomes digital.
“The digitisation of those more offline channels, how we use the planning tools to take that new approach to technology planning and the way that consumers are using all platforms from a digital device to consume their media is really resonating into how we approach briefs and client’s work.”
Isaac said that there’s historically been a “huge focus” on the cost of media spots, with 2023 being a “pivotal year” as to how agencies address that as an industry.
“I'm really interested to see where we take that over the next six to 12 months with the likes of audit brands who are holding the purse strings to some degree, in terms of our performance bonuses or success metrics that we have with some of our clients who use those independent auditors.
“In a market that is fully digitalised and addressable, pricing per inventory spot becomes less important, so how do we modify our success metrics with those clients, particularly for pitching? It’s been a critical part of pitching historically - how much do you pay for the thirty second spot on this date? - but it’s becoming less relevant.”
Vogel said that the industry has typically talked about owned, earned and paid media, but Wavemaker has added another category to that trio – made media – with Sullivan providing the example of ‘Siri-ously in Need of a Holiday’.
“It was off the back of a really challenging time for Tourism Whitsundays over COVID and the destination markets creating massive campaigns, wanting those Australian tourists in their region. We identified an opportunity for us to stand out and we tapped into something that no one had ever done before, which was using an influencer in the way of Siri.
“It just so happened that the voice of Siri is someone called Karen Jacobson, who hails from the Whitsundays. We used the voice of Siri to bring the Whitsundays to life and get that cut through in media. Our first iteration of the campaign was audio only, which has really never been done with a destination tourism campaign, where you've got to bring the destination to life with images.
“We didn't need that - we had Siri and she interrupted on all of the radio and mobile ads and used her voice to direct you to the Whitsundays and your next holiday, and it's had a significant impact to the region and those local operators that were really struggling for a number of years.”
Sullivan said that in year one, Wavemaker registered a 12:1 ROI, and in the following couple of years, they’re looking at a six-to-seven-dollar ROI on the campaign.
“We led that as a creative and media proposition and that's what we're really excited to do - use creativity to use media in a new way and a new format. Siri was the perfect voice for us to do that while also working around trademarks with Apple, where we couldn't actually use ‘Hey, Siri’ so the campaign is called ‘Siri-ously in Need of a Holiday’.
Having just celebrated their five-year anniversary, Vogel said that the plan for 2023 is all about continuing on the trajectory they’ve started, keeping their existing clients happy and adding new clients.
Wavemaker's Sydney team
“Last year, aside from new business, we retained a huge amount of our clients. The biggest one was Mondelez, which went up for global pitch, and we retained it in our region and that was based on just building a strong relationship. We’ve worked with the likes of Mitsubishi for over 50 years now and Colgate Palmolive and Paramount for both over 20 years.
“The big focus is on bringing in different types of talent. Diversity and inclusion is a big focus for us and the skills that we require these days are quite diverse; not only diversity in terms of gender, race, religion, ethnicity, but it’s also about diversity in the way people think and to ensure that when these people join our business, they can bring 100% of themselves 100% of the time.
“On the technology side, it’s about continuing to develop new pieces of technology that ensure we’re maximising the return from our people. We’ve done a lot in terms of sexuality, race and gender, but we also recently launched our Disability Action Plan.
“We want to make our agency the most welcoming and the most wanted for people with disabilities to join and work at.”
Vogel says something that sets Wavemaker apart from other agencies is the fact that they have five offices in Australia.
“Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Adelaide and Perth and then we have an office in Auckland, and no other network has got that - a lot of networks might have two offices or maybe three at a push. That is really about being close partners to our clients in those markets to be representative across all of Australia.”
Wavemaker also works with a number of pro bono clients, with Vogel saying they’re fully supportive of GroupM's global ambition, which is to make advertising work better for people.
“In Sydney, we’re doing pro bono work for White Lion and Kindness Factory. It's important to give back to communities and help them; based on the White Lion work, Philippa was inducted into the UnLtd Hall of Good, which we are very proud of.
“It's just the day to day work that we do for some of our clients - we've done a great campaign for Colgate-Palmolive where we used sign language for the song of an AFL team. We’re represented on the MFA, the AIMCO steering committee and we run the media training masters course for the AANA.”
In Brisbane, Wavemaker works with yourtown, the charity behind Kids Helpline and a provider of services for young people, with a focus on mental health and wellbeing, long-term unemployment, prevention of youth suicide, child protection, as well as support for those experiencing domestic and family violence.
Sullivan: “Obviously over the last few years, the youth of Australia have faced a lot of challenges and the demand on Kids Helpline has been phenomenal. As such, we've needed a lot more support to ensure that we have the teams and the counsellors there when those kids really need to reach out.
“Some of the great work that we've done was really identifying that the youth of today are not about calling a phone line, so we've put the counsellors into gaming environments and into social media to talk to them within the platforms which they feel comfortable to have a conversation in and not retrofit and force that conversation to be held in a medium that they're not comfortable with
“We also have counsellors where they can email in and get that support in a non-confrontational environment for them. We've got some really great work coming up for them this year as well.”
Shivani Maharaj, Chief Content & Partnerships Officer, Wavemaker ANZ
You were an early champion of influencer marketing. What sparked this passion?
I actually have a major in Advertising and PR so naturally earned media was always an interest of mine. (A fun fact was that I was actually meant to start my career at PR agency Hill & Knowlton.) I didn’t like the perception, stereotypes and negative media around the influencer space, so I made it my mission to make it smarter, more creative and inclusive for our clients, creators and consumers. I also wanted to ensure we were taking advertising forward and representing Australia. Influencers and creators are creating audiences the size of media houses, but they are doing it on an equal playing field – the internet – here everyone is represented.
What is the best part of your job?
Ideas and creativity. I love it!
What’s got you excited about 2023?
Social media is the new TV. I’m excited about brand storyteling in a new way.
Philippa Noilea-Tani, Chief Investment Officer, Wavemaker ANZ
You’ve been with Wavemaker and previously MEC for your entire career. What makes you stick around?
I’m extremely proud of what I have achieved at our agency over the past 17 years, having started as Media Assistant in 2005, progressing to my current role as Chief Investment Officer. I’m extremely self-driven and Wavemaker has provided me the opportunity to keep my learning curve steep.
I strongly believe we should all feel empowered to shape our career in a way that complements our busy, often complicated and challenging lives outside of work. As a single mum of 3 young kids, I greatly appreciate that Wavemaker ensures no one ever feels the need to put work ahead of their loved ones.
Having built my career at the one agency, I feel empowered to lead agency initiatives and be part of any change, connected to our network (locally, regionally and globally) and involved in major agency decisions.
In turn, Wavemaker has someone who is incredibly invested in the future of the company. A true advocate who will passionately seek out any opportunity to make Wavemaker an even more exceptional place to work.
I’ve had the opportunity to work with our CEO Peter Vogel for more than 15 years in both our various roles. I have immense respect for the way he leads our agency – he is brilliant with clients, with our people, and our media partners. I feel very supported and trusted by him, and that is incredibly important to me in a role.
What’s the biggest challenge in your role?
My most significant challenge of the past 12 months has been in helping our clients understand and navigate what has been a game-changing year in television. We’ve been working hard to positively provoke a seismic step change to our clients’ video strategies, and while it’s been a challenging 12 months, it’s been incredibly rewarding to see the evolution deliver brand growth.
What are you focused on for 2023?
My time as a scholar of The Marketing Academy last year was a game changer for me. The program and the people I met, helped me realise that I have a lot more value to offer our clients, our people and our agency, both within Investment and more broadly. Wavemaker is set up for an incredible year of growth in 2023, and I’m looking forward to the opportunities that growth unlocks for all Wavemakers.
Jarrad Cook, Client Associate Director, Wavemaker Adelaide
What attracted you to Wavemaker?
I used to work media side and I always found Wavemaker provided detailed briefs and had a sound understanding of media owners’ capabilities. When I was looking to move into a position in a media agency, I considered Wavemaker the best place to learn and grow. I had been dealing with some of the Wavemaker team for 18 months, they always treated me well and took time with me as I learnt the ropes. Once I took the role at Wavemaker, I couldn’t wait to get stuck in.
What does a typical day look like for you?
Currently in my role I help lead the Adelaide Foundation Team, made up of Client Coordinators and Client Executives. I lead their progression and development and my day to day is working across our client teams and our specialist teams to ensure the output of the Foundation Team is meeting client needs. I also spend time ensuring the team is focusing on the highest priority tasks at any time.
What do you love most about your role?
I enjoy watching someone who has just come out of university grow and be impactful in bringing a media campaign to life within a few short months. Currently I’m focused on developing Adelaide’s Foundation Team to nurture the best possible media planners and industry experts for tomorrow. I find it incredibly rewarding to offer someone a role outside of Foundation Team once they are ready for the next challenge, and (strangely) I enjoy it when Team members come to me to share that they have accepted a new progressive role in the industry – ready to use the skills they developed at Wavemaker Adelaide. We often see those people return later in their careers.
Laura Brady, Group Client Director, Wavemaker Sydney
DE&I is a passion for you. How does Wavemaker enable you to enact positive change in this space?
As an industry and an agency, we have made some positive steps in terms of DE&I, but some areas have received less focus than others – disability really stands out. For me personally, my brother lives with autism and I have watched his struggle to achieve continuous employment. This is what I wanted to change for others in the future. As a Wavemaker representative on the GroupM Young Leader’s Committee, nCO, we were empowered to do exactly that and recently launched the GroupM Disability Action Plan (DAP).
Throughout the whole process, we have had the full support from both the GroupM and Wavemaker senior leadership teams. But now comes the hardest part – doing it and holding ourselves accountable. I hope this will benefit everyone at Wavemaker, both those living with disability and those without. Being able to contribute and make a positive change is what makes Wavemaker such a special place to work.
What first attracted you to Wavemaker?
I started out at Wavemaker (MEC at the time) in London as an intern – fresh out of university and having no idea what the big wide world involved. Eight years and two continents later, I am still part of the Wavemaker family. I think that speaks volumes. Our industry famously struggles with staff turnover, but long tenures are common at Wavemaker. There is a reason that people join Wavemaker and stay – it’s all because of the culture. Wavemaker is a collection of accessible, passionate, and intelligent people who take pride in everything they do. It is this ambition from the team around me that I continue to find inspiring.
What do you love most about your role?
I love Wavemaker’s attitude of positive provocation – it lives in everything we do as a business, from how we collaborate internally to how we drive growth for our clients. It allows us to challenge others, but more importantly be challenged ourselves.
The nature of our business is that we get an inside look into some of the biggest businesses both locally and globally. We are lucky enough to learn about different categories, businesses, markets etc. But we don’t stop there, we get to really understand it and then challenge it. This is what I love.
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