Hardie Grant acquires Keep Left in a deal a year in the making
Hardie Grant has acquired creative communications agency Keep Left in a deal that continues the publishing and media group’s growth steady accumulation of marketing heft.
Keep Left will maintain its operational independence, leadership and staff as part of Hardie Grant Media alongside its existing specialist agencies, including Reload Media.
Keep Left was founded in 2001 by Caroline Catterall, who later partnered with her colleague Gillian Gosling as they built the business. The pair remained the sole owners of the agency until the sale to Hardie Grant, which Catterall said had followed a measured timeline.
“It’s been a long dating process,” she said. “ It’s been 12 plus months, but we really have taken the time to get to know each other … for Gill and myself, having run Keep Left for over 20 years, it was a big decision to partner with the right group.”
Gillian Gosling, Craig Somerville and Caroline Catterall
Catterall said with Hardie Grant “it really felt like the values alignment was good” and “ the philosophy was good around how we could grow together”.
Neither Catterall nor Craig Somerville, who heads up Hardie Grant Media, would disclose any of the details of the deal.
“ I can’t really talk about any of the financial terms, but what I can say is that we’re in it for the long term, so this isn’t an exit strategy,” Catterall told Mumbrella.
“It’s funny when you go through something like this, people think, ‘oh, what are you gonna do next?’ And it’s ‘I’m gonna work for Hardie Grant Media’. That’s the plan, that’s the intention. So this is not an exit strategy on our behalf.”
Somerville said Keep Left’s capabilities dovetailed with Hardie Grant Media’s existing agencies, including communications agency Tide, which specialises in consumer PR, events and experiential work.
“It’s very complementary to the type of things that Keep Left does, particularly because they have a bit more of a corporate PR lens. [Keep Left] do a lot more with creative execution for earned media, which fits in quite nicely with the way in which we position Tide.”
From the Keep Left website
“It’s really about capability. Keep Left, with their multi-award-winning agency and brand, have built an incredible reputation for themselves and their team … We don’t want to interfere with that – we want to let it continue to play out and essentially support them in the vision they’re already working towards.”
Somerville knows what he is talking about: he was running consultancy Reload (which he co-founded) when it was acquired by Hardie Grant Media.
“ I think the benefit I’ve got is that I’ve been in exactly Caroline’s shoes. This is exactly the circumstance that I personally faced in 2022: you’ve been used to being out solo and now [you are] operating as part of a bigger group and all the both opportunities and challenges that come with that.”
Hardie Grant Media was founded in 1997 by Fiona Hardie as part of the Hardie Grant media group, initially focussing on content creation before evolving into broader marketing services. Its agencies now include Reload (digital marketing consultancy), Heads and Tales (content), Sherpa (production), Tide (comms) and Keep Left. Hardie’s son Nick Hardie-Grant took leadership of the whole group – which comprises Hardie Grant Media and Hardie Grant Publishing – at the beginning of the year and is now CEO.
The Keep Left teams – 25 people in total – in Sydney and Melbourne have this week shifted into Hardie Grant Media’s offices in those cities. Given that Catterall and Gosling say they intend to stay working in the business and that there will be no staff cuts, what are the real advantages of joining a larger group?
“What Gill and I are really looking forward to is just having the support of a larger group behind us,” she said, listing product and innovation, people and culture, and finance as areas where being part of a bigger company would bring benefits.
“All of the things that we love about being an indie will remain, but we can really level up. We wanted to make sure that for ourselves and for our people, we can offer them best practice in all of those areas.”
The deal brings Hardie Grant new capabilities and new development opportunities for Keep Left, but it’s also a big step in a deeply personal journey for Catterall, who seems to be in a state of quiet elation over the acquisition.
“I founded Keep Left at the ripe old age of 23. So 23 years later here we are.”
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topics
acquisitions
caroline catterall
communications
Craig Somervilee
Hardie Grant
Hardie Grant Media
Keep Left
Nick Hardie-Grant
PR
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