Atomic 212° won’t change post its sale but will enhance what the agency has already built, newly minted CEO Rory Heffernan told AdNews.
The local arm of France-based Publicis Groupe acquired independent media agency Atomic 212° in January.
While the agency is scheduled to move out of its iconic office in Walsh Bay into Publicis’ Pymont-based headquarters later in the year and now has access to the best of the holding group’s technology and policies, the majority of its offering will be unchanged.
“We're really proud and happy with what we've built, so it would be crazy to go through an acquisition and then throw away everything that's got us to this point both for staff, clients, pitches and everything else,” Heffernan said.
“Publicis were interested in us because of our people and product - so we'll continue to build on that.”
Rory Heffernan started at Atomic 212º 15 years ago as the agency’s first full-time employee, landing his first role straight out of university as SEO executive.
Now as chief executive officer Heffernan is going to keep the entrepreneurial spirit from the agency's start-up phase alive.
“Our proposition ’smarter, faster, accountable’ is now more relevant than ever with the challenging market of the last few years,” Heffernan said.
“That proposition led us to becoming the biggest indie, so the vision for the future is still focused on those two areas - to continue evolving our product as new technology emerges and also developing our people.”
For Atomic clients there wasn't any hesitancy to the merger, instead clients were genuinely happy for the business.
“Publicis is obviously a great group to join, so maybe it would have been a harder sell if we were bought by another holdco,” Heffernan said.
“A lot of the clients were familiar with Publicis as a class operation or had past positive dealings with them so there was no hesitancy there.
“The clients obviously wanted to know what it means for them - which was just a matter of showing them that all those things they've currently got are not changing and it will help enhance things moving forward.”
Proprietary technology will remain as a core pillar of the agency, with plenty of in house platforms and market mix modeling builds.
But now the agency will add Publicis’ products into the mix for Atomic clients, particularly the Lotame acquisition is an exciting offering that Atomic didn’t have previously.
Similarly, while Atomic will continue to offer its own internal people and culture initiatives to staff, staff will also have access to dozens of policies through the Publicis Groupe.
“For example as an indie we couldn't offer Publicis’ work from anywhere program,” Heffernan said.
“There'll be more paths and more opportunities for the people in the business, whether that's local, regional or international. That's really exciting.”
“But we won’t be letting go of our own initiatives - we're putting a lot of emphasis on communication training and making sure as we grow people are getting the best of what's got Atomic to this point.”
The move into Publicis’ offices will also benefit Atomic Sydney staff. While Atomic Melbourne will continue to enjoy a newly built office.
“We’ve been in that office for over a decade but held onto it for a long time because it is so beautiful despite out-growing the space,” Heffernan said.
“But the space, the internet etc is not really keeping up with where we're at now. So the team is actually pretty excited to move and start feeling those benefits of being part of the broader group.”
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