Accenture buys The Monkeys and Maud
Global professional services company Accenture has bought independent creative agency The Monkeys and design business Maud.
The acquisition aims to strengthen Accenture Interactive’s customer experience capabilities, as well as the services Accenture Interactive provides to chief marketing officers and chief digital officers.
Mark Green, The Monkeys’ chief executive officer, chief creative officers Justin Drape and Scott Nowell, and Maud chief creative officer David Park, will continue in their current roles as well as take on additional Accenture Interactive leadership positions to drive brand strategy and creativity in Australia and New Zealand.
Massive congrats to all. Great news for the industry too.
Massive. If you can’t beat them, buy them.
10 years from now (5 years from now?), will these be the big advertising holding groups…
PwC
Accenture
Deloitte
Given they are the big ‘professional services’ groups, it feels inevitable.
KPMG
Oh and Google?
wow
Stunning! And yet, not surprising at all…
The major agencies have been on notice for a while now and chosen to do nothing to innovate the existing model. Of course Accenture and the like can see opportunity in disruption through creative acquisition! Every independent creative house in Australia has just seen their future exit strategy!
How exactly does being owned by Accenture (versus being owned by a major holding company group) “innovate” or “disrupt” the industry.
Its just an acquisiton.. they are not doing anything new as far as i can see..
Henry
It’s disruptive if it forces other agencies to change their model/strategy; I’m sure plenty are sweating about it. As for the sale, well deserved Monkeys. Congrets.
Wow this is huge! Congratulations Monkeys.
Nice one
Congratulations guys. Brilliant move. Far better to get into bed with a respected business than an avaricious holding group. This has to be the future.
They will be the next Reactive, gutted by the process, politics and procurement policies of big consulting. If you think that nothing will happen, no one will leave and things will only get better, you are sadly mistaken. I guarantee that 50%+ will be gone in 6-12months.
Don’t believe the ‘consulting is disrupting’ content from media, they are just buying clients and bunging in this type of work for free whilst they focus on bigger, more profitable stuff.
It sounds like you might be someone with an axe to grind rather than state facts.
CMO’s supplier needs are changing and that’s why it is disrupting.
I was with a CMO of a Tier 1 brand last week who explained she will not turn to her (highly reputable) agency of record, but will instead work with the firms consulting & digital partner because “they have the skills I need, I cannot get them from my agency”.
FFW 2 yrs; I didn’t get what I was hoping for actually
Yep, spot on
This is unreal! Congratulations Monkeys.
It’s only valuable if you can integrate well.
And I wonder how long it will take for The Monkeys to get tired of the internal BS that clogs up the pipes in consultancies.
I suspect the shine will ware of in a couple of years.
Nonetheless, really pleased for The Monkeys to get something from the years’ of hard work.
What Mr Fishlock said.
Congrats.
Bravo! Consulting firms continue to blow up the status quo of the Jurassic-like agency model. Old structures and approaches can’t and won’t solve the challenges of today. Congratulations to my Alma Mater, Accenture Interactive and to Monkeys and Maud – a potent partnership!
Is it all blokes involved with this one?
The owners and founders are, yes, blokes.
Potentially a massive development but the buzz killer is cultural change. Don’t kid yourself that Accenture Digital are anything like an ad agency or design studio when it comes to people and culture. They are corporates, no matter what they say, and integrating the looseness of an agency culture and creative workflow into that behemoth won’t happen easily. Big challenge but if they can pull it off…
Not sure this will happen. Accenture has been involved with ‘creative types’ for long enough to know what they’re getting into. There is no way they would buy such an A-grade outfit such as Monkeys, and not understand that the agency principals have their own way of doing things (very successfully). Just so long as they deliver on hard KPIs – and contribute substantively as a part of the toolkit. It would be interesting to know whether awards were a KPI in this case.
Ha! You have no idea. That’s exactly what’s occurring globally and here with these aquisitions.
A few years ago now, the large accounting firms saw how much money was actually being poured into producing and printing the old-style fat-budget mandatory annual reports, and decided they wanted a taste. So they started buying design businesses specialising in annual reports. Then they got into design businesses specialising in other channels – i.e. websites. Most of these business sat at the bottom-up end of the spectrum and have never had the intellectual capital to hold their position within an environment surrounded by bean counters.
Monkeys is something else; a top-down agency. I can’t think of another that can produce high-end channel-agnostic thinking as well as Monkeys that’s been swallowed up by an accounting major.
I think Accenture has actually bought Monkeys for the people. While the business itself will need to be a profit centre, it’s the key principals and their best staff whom Accenture want, and will use with their own top-down services – management consulting. Not easy to find creatives that can work under these strictures – you can’t just sit a crazy guy in a t-shirt in a room with the full C-suite (and not just the CMO) and expect them to listen, you need a disciplined type of creative like Ted Horten or Neil Lawrence.
If I’m reading this deal correctly, this could be one of the first formalised relationships where the creative is to be used for ‘lateral’ business thinking, not just communication thinking.
You’re reading way too much into it.
Maybe. Maybe not.
How much ? Are we talking Ferraris?
You’re looking at 15 to 20 million. With 5 shareholders. 3 to 5 mill each. Not bad!!!
only 3 ‘real’ shareholders though and others with tiny holdings.
up to 50% upfront, the other half split over earn out period and % paid each year if hit agreed KPIs on revenue, client churn and staff retention.
This is all really good. In theory.
Whether they acknowledge it or not this is a merger of two businesses. In every single case this means change. One culture invariably wins out, and when the big buys the small you know the drill (Reactive anyone?). More than that though, in this case the cultures could not be more different. So, when they inevitably clash, the chance of this fulfilling everyones hopes and dreams are pretty modest. Take a deep breath people.
I’m sure the owners have and will do very nicely though. So well done.
I suspect after the deal term sheets escrow period is up and clients have gone due to monkeys managements focus being shifted by the new owners, creativity dwindling, service levels dropping off the Monkeys mojo sadly will be gone!
Unfortunately it is a tried and true outcome, creative agencies are good because they are independent and creative and the Monkeys are one of the best – Accenture….mmmm not so much, they see it as most big consulting companies, diversification and $ to add new blood to the return on shareholder value, not wrong, but sadly not right for the creative space…
But i could be wrong
Thanks and good on the Monkeys for doing it well for the last decade and providing us with some cracking creative and advertising
I’ve been through a few of these. Companies are never purchased to keep them the same. Restructures, cost cutting and destruction of the essence of what made an independent agency great are the first things to go. Congrats to founders who will do well but sadly its a painful demise for everyone else. Thats just how it goes.
In some industries when we see a bunch of guys take it upon themselves to start a business with their own money, turn it into a terrific success that becomes the envy of their industry and then just 10 years later sell it in to a large firm who will help them grow it to the next level; they would be lauded and applauded. That’s what I choose to do too. Well done The Monkeys. Celebrate in style, as you always have.
Ditto Andy. These guys succeeded by making their clients successful. Bravo to ‘The Moneys’ 😉
Mumbrella…you tout yourself as being thorough in journalism. Not one mention of the deal. Or even that the deal was confidential. Go back and ask the real tough questions. How much, what terms etc. I know they are your award darlings…but what’s the scratch?
Well that 3 million might get you a carpark with view somewhere in Sydney I guess. Congrats though. Better than selling to Saatchi back in 2011.