Merged digital agency Reborn to offer media buying and sales
Two Sydney-based interactive agencies, Lighthouse Interactive and the V Project, are merging their brands to form a new agency. Reborn, a full service digital outfit, will offer media sales as well as planning and buying.
The two agencies have been working together since 2007 in the same offices, collaborating on clients such as Tourism Ireland early on.
Working in tandem, they have developed expertise in the beauty sector, with clients L’Oreal Group and Estee Lauder.
They formed a single billing entity in 2008.
Media is a key part of Reborn’s plans, and the agency wants to develop its relationships with women’s beauty and fashion websites to form a media sales network.
Sabir Samtani, director of Reborn and founder of the V Project, conceded that he, and co-director David Easton, founder of Lighthouse Interactive, were “still working out how we do the media bit”.
“Obviously, our media planning and buying and media sales operations will be run separately to avoid any potential conflict of interest,” Samtani asserted.
A key current project is to revamp and handle sales for the fashion and beauty site rescu.com.au.
Reborn is currently in the market for a media manager.
The agency’s client list also includes Colgate Palmolive, Club Med, Coty, Fairfax Digital, Mirvac, Novartis and Revlon.
Reborn has 23 staff, and has introduced a profit share scheme for all employees.
Samtani added: “We doubled turnover in our first to second year, and are close to doubling it again this year. That said, we don’t want to grow to an agency with 100 people just yet, we’d rather focus on the quality of what we deliver.”
The agency has plans to open an office in Melbourne as well as expand into Asia, its first stop being Hong Kong.
Congrats both Sabir and David, makes a lot of sense to merge, if you need a hand monetising your databases let’s discuss!
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Good luck guys.
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Gee, I wonder which media the planners will recommend? Impossible to separate the businesses. Perception is reality.
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It wont work as a media buyer.
Sales? Maybe. Unlikely.
The question for both is why would they be successful?
Sabir?
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you want to offer media planning and also media sales? hang on …
no wait – big media agencies are doing the same thing now with the ad exchanges. will be odd taking media recommendations from the same group trying to sell you their media product.
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Hey Guys,
Thanks for your feedback and to Mark and Dazza, thanks as well to your kind words.
I can definitely understand your reservations about the two working together and as mentioned in the article, we are still trying to work this out to see if it will work.
From the two, the Media network is definitely our priority and this is what our focus will be on moving forward. Media planning and buying is a very small part of our business and is only offered to existing clients who come to us looking for a solution…so its more a value add than a new extension of our business.
We rather work with our clients media agencies so its only something we will do for brands that come to us.
The network is our key growth plan on the media side while the digital creative part of our business outweighs all the others as this is what our core business is.
Thanks again for your questions and let me know if you have any more questions.
Cheers,
Sabir
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