Experiential agency closes doors in face of challenging market
Ignition EM is closing its doors as an experiential marketing agency after 10 years to become a consultancy.
As part of the changes, it has been progressively cutting back its head count from nine staff at the beginning of the year to two – now consisting only of founder Nick Callander and a senior account director.
Callander said the move was necessary in the face of the changing nature of the experiential marketing industry which has become more and more about “sampling campaigns”.
He said: “We’ve started to see a lot of promo agencies and PR agencies doing it and more and more they have [experiential marketing] become nothing more than sampling campaigns. I don’t think a lot of clients have an idea about what experiential marketing is.”
As a consultancy he said it would now look to work more directly with clients and agencies and develop ideas for brands in areas such as sponsorships and events.
This year the agency has worked on campaigns for Kleenex, Kellogg’s, Foster’s and XBox.
Callander added that the studio arm of his agency which he launched five years ago, called Ignition ID, would be merged with another business to create a start up. It will continue to create point of sale material, websites and print advertising.
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