Ogilvy acquires Bullseye as it looks to bolster digital capabilities
Ogilvy Australia has acquired digital agency Bullseye as it looks to beef up its digital offering, with the Australian office to work under the Ogilvy banner.
Bullseye, founded in 2000, has more than 100 staff in offices across Sydney, Melbourne, Auckland and Indonesia, including an offshore production facility.
The move comes as the Ogilvy agencies look set to go on a new business offensive having recently parted ways with Vodafone in Sydney and Myer in Melbourne. STW Group also owns digital agency DT.
Ogilvy Australia’s CEO David Fox said: “This acquisition isn’t about creating a new digital capability within the agency, it’s about making our existing team bigger, faster and stronger.
WPP acquired a 33.3% stake in DT two years ago from STW. That acquisition was made through O&M Asia and touted how the DT Ogilvy relationship would expand. Why does O&M Australia now need a different partner? What’s happened in the past two years that DT is now no longer suitable?
Or does it have more to do with keeping 100% of digital revenue inside STW vs actually servicing client needs. O&M Australia has lost much of it’s traditional business and digital is growing…
Stories like this could be better probed.
I wouldn’t be surprised if the motive was profitability, but newsflash – they are a business.
With 100 staff, I doubt that the shift to bulls eye would hinder their ability to “servic(e) client needs”.
Press release when Ogilvy bought into DT
The integrated nature of many of our client campaigns makes it absolutely right for Ogilvy that we have DTDigital even further aligned with that business
What then happened was the opposite of alignment. DT takes over the Ogilvy digital team and the digital output for Ogilvy. DT then gets rid of the Ogilvy dead wood and builds its own team and milks the Ogilvy client base. At the same time DT keeps on gaining its own clients making it a stronger digital specialist agency and leaving Ogilvy high and dry with no digital capability whats so ever.
Hence they have to buy outright another digital agency to regain digital capability so that it can provide an integrated service.
Note – I’ve never worked for DT or Ogilvy the above are just observations.
Good luck with that…typically STW makes an acquisition of a cool business agency where everyone gets on and great work is produced. Once STW make the move all the great people head for the hills as they are pressured to hit ever climbing targets, let’s face it STW has shareholders and numbers is what counts.
Shame on you Bullseye for not standing alone!
6 Star dashboards for all!
This is business and this is how the business is shaping up
Anyone who thinks clients will want ‘specialist outfits’ especially in digital – are sadly mistaken – the big guns will eventually swallow them up
Congrats to Jason Davey – you deserved the buy-out – you worked bloody hard – I remember those late night pitches well – we killed it
Best from London
@kevinferry