Sefiani Communications Group acquired by Clarity Global
After 23 years of being privately owned, Sefiani Communications Group has been wholly acquired by global communications and digital marketing agency, Clarity Global.
The Mumbrella-award winning agency will continue under the Sefiani brand, as part of the Clarity Global Group. Founder, CEO and reputation counsel, Robyn Sefiani, will also continue at the business as Clarity Global’s president ANZ and reputation counsel, and will sit on the group’s global presidents’ board.
In an exclusive interview she told Mumbrella that the sale included a commitment by herself of four years to the business, however she added that as she is so passionate about her work, that when the four years comes up, she will likely be looking to extend that.
Robyn Sefiani
“I’m very focused on ensuring that we have a strong and sustainable future for the agency,” she said. “It’s business as usual, but better, because we now have access to digital and data capability… and a global presence.”
This is the first acquisition in the Asia Pacific by Clarity Global, with more expected.
“Clarity [Global] is a highly aspirational and ambitious company. I think we are in for an exciting ride of rapid growth,” added Sefiani.
Sefiani Communications was named PR Agency of the Year – Midsize, at the 2022 CommsCon Awards, which the Sydney-based agency first won in 2018. Sefiani herself was named PR Leader of the Year, while colleague Julia Hoy was named PR Professional of the Year. The agency employs 21 staff, providing services across Australia, New Zealand and Asia.
Sefiani was approached by Clarity Global which was looking to establish itself in the region mid last year.
Sami McCabe
“We’d been approached by another agency, and were getting into the mindset of considering how to build a sustainable future for Sefiani so that the agency has a clear pathway for the next decade and beyond that. They [Clarity Global] wanted an agency in Sydney, and they found us.
“Sefiani name has been around a long time, and we are thankful that it is going to be continuing.”
According to Sami McCabe, founder and CEO of Clarity Global, Sefiani kept popping up in conversations and after connection with Sefiani, they hit it off “immediately”.
“The alignment of values and culture – it was really evident from the get-go that there was close alignment on those important things between Clarity [Global] and Sefiani,” McCabe told Mumbrella.
“If we want to expand across Asia, having people of Robyn, Nick [Owens], Mandy [Galmes] and Tina [Peng]’s calibre in that time zone with all of the existing connective tissue they have with the Asian market makes a lot of sense for us.
“As opposed to immediately landing in Singapore or Hong Kong, this is a much more straightforward gateway into the region. It’s important to recognise that Australia in itself is important, and we see plenty of growth locally as well.”
Sefiani speaking at Mumbrella360
It seems the feeling was mutual, with Sefiani adding that there was a real culture and values fit with the Clarity Global team and that the agency had already identified digital and data analytics capability as a key priority for the future in its strategy.
“We are excited about our future with Clarity Global and the opportunities ahead – to advance our people’s careers, bring new services to clients, and go on the journey with a rapidly growing global agency,” said Sefiani.
McCabe added: “One of the great things from Sefiani’s perspective is we have established robust digital marketing and data capabilities they were wanting to build out. We can really turbo charge that process for them.
“We have comprehensive and robust toolkits to allow clients to overcome their challenges and grab opportunities. Sefiani can now sell these digital capabilities and data analytics. And we are benefitting as well from Sefiani’s reputation management capabilities which we will roll out across the globe. It’s a nice integration. It’s definitely about geography but in some ways more importantly it’s about bringing to the table these great capabilities globally.”
Clarity Global first launched in the UK before expanding into Europe and the US. McCabe said the team is working towards having a consistent experience across geographies, but that it will “take some time”. It currently has offices in London, Cornwall, San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York and Amsterdam.
“The goal is full integration and a truly consistent experience across the brand. We will go through a period of intentional integration and there is a bunch of work to be done on that front. As soon as that is done, we will turn our attention to other opportunities. We are inquisitive and we have a buy and build strategy and we expect to do that across APAC. I expect later this year to start entertaining conversations with agencies across Asia. The Sefiani leadership team will help us with that.”
“We’ve shown in the UK that even with a well-established agency locally if there are other opportunities locally via acquisitions, we are opportunistically open to those. It’s not currently in the plans but I wouldn’t rule it out.”
Sefiani’s clients include Airbus, Allen & Overy, CrowdStrike, EY (Ernst & Young), Expedia (Stayz), Henkel and L’Oreal.
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Olivia Kruimel is the managing editor at Mumbrella. She has more than 15 years of experience in journalism, communications and marketing. Her journalism career began at Fairfax Media (now part of Nine) and includes various B2B publications such as B&T, Travel Today and ALB. As a marketer Olivia has worked for Standard Chartered and various global law firms.
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