Aegis Media merges Visual Jazz and Isobar
In another key early development at Aegis Media this year, digital agency Visual Jazz has been merged with Isobar to form one of Australia’s largest digital agencies.
The combined operation, branded Visual Jazz Isobar, has a national presence of 180 staff – 15 from Isobar and 165 from Visual Jazz – with offices in Melbourne, Sydney and Canberra.
Konrad Spilva, a founder and current MD of Visual Jazz, will be MD of Visual Jazz Isobar, reporting to David Stephenson, MD of Aegis Media Pacific’s digital creative division.
The Sydney office of Visual Jazz Isobar, which now will have a team of over 30 people, will be led by Grant Henderson as GM and Verity Tuck as senior account director.
The newly merged agencies key clients are Holden, HSBC, Medibank, JB Hi-Fi, David Jones, Lend Lease and Treasury Wine Estates.
Stephenson said, in a press release:
Since Visual Jazz was founded more than 10 years ago, it has grown from a start up to one of Australia’s leading digital creative agencies and named B&T’s 2011 Interactive Agency of the Year.
Isobar Sydney has a strong creative team plus the backing of one of the world’s biggest and best digital agencies. We have a very powerful offer to our clients and a very positive story to attract the best talent going around.
We’re bringing together the very best people on the ground with the ability to further tap into the extensive global resource and knowledge bank of Isobar. Asia is a growth market for many of our clients and Visual Jazz has already worked with Isobar to deliver client work in several Asian markets. This is really great news for our team and our clients.
The news comes in the same week as Aegis Media announced the launch of innovation unit Jumptank, and just over a fortnight it announced it was relaunching media agency brand Vizeum.
Why would you call it Visual Jazz Isobar……what are Isobar bringing to the table other than 15 people? Sounds like they are trying to merge an under performing business into a performing one to make a headache go away.
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Why wouldn’t you just merge Isobar into VJ and retain the name?
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Isobar has a bigger global presence perhaps? And are seen as more of creative agency?
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Visual Isobar?
Jazzy Isobar?
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…see this coming a mile off?
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Another example of Aegis not getting digital and how to protect their performing agencies – anyone remember Far Far… the once powerhouse now defunct.
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How long before they rebadge Visual Jazz as Glue?
Glue-Isobar seems to be go for Aegis around the rest of the world…
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No quote form anyone at Isobar…says it all. Who could ever imagine those nice guys at Mitchel’s ‘merging’ another local business in this way
Story actually reads ” VJ uses global network name and absorbs local staf. Local staff soon to run for exit.f”
Total surprise to everyone.
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@Anonymous If they didn’t have Isobar in the name, they don’t get to add the “global network” slide in the creds deck (c.f. Amnesia + Razorfish)
@Kermet – GlueIsobar exists in 1 market – The UK.
Visual Jazz Isobar is a dumb name – Possibly all lining up for a global reshift to being Isobar London, Isobar Toronto etc. In a few years?
Didn’t AEGIS buy Mitchell’s to bolster all of their offerings?
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While Aegis may have bought MItchell’s to bolster its offerings locally, the reality is the other way round. Aegis is desperately trying to pull Mitchell’s (esp the media agencies) into the 21st Century!
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Next: Aegis absorbs emitch into 1 agency = Carat
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How about … Jisobar Glue.
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