Sparro and Jack Nimble make several new hires after Brainlabs acquisition
Digital marketing agency Sparro by Brainlabs, and its creative production agency Jack Nimble, have made a number of senior hires since being acquired by a global performance media agency.
Michael Sparkes, Lauren Nixon-Smith, Kiki Jones, and Morgen Mathews join the agency group following several new business wins and product launches.
Sparkes returns to Sparro as group SEO director after two years in the UK. He previously worked at the agency for just over four years from 2018-2022.
“We’re pumped to have Sparkes back at Sparro,” said co-founder and partner of Sparro by Brainlabs, Morris Bryant. “When he first joined us 6 years ago, he was an integral part of our maturation into a fully-fledged digital agency. Now he’s going to be a major part of our next growth period.”
(L-R): Kiki Jones, Morgen Mathews, Lauren Nixon-Smith, Michael Sparkes
Nixon-Smith joins the agency as senior digital marketer, after four-and-a-half years working at News Corp Australia. She will lead a newly minted team of paid media specialists across brands including MYOB and Domino’s APAC.
Byrant continued: “We believe that when we grow our knowledge and capabilities, our clients grow with us. It’s why we’ve been making senior hires over the last 12 months, and it’s why we’ve focused on growing our service offering too.
“We’ve built the most advanced data science team of any indie agency in Australia, grown our creative and production offering with Jack Nimble, and are building unique-in-market AI-driven products across SEO and paid media.”
Jones joins Jack Nimble as group account director after three years at The General Store, working across strategy, brand identity and client service. Mathews also joins the creative agency, after a two year stint at We The People in Melbourne, working across influencers, social and production.
Angus Mullane, executive producer and co-founder of Jack Nimble, said since Sparro’s acquisition of the creative agency in 2021, it has seen growth “beyond our expectations”.
“Our team has exploded in size from 6 to 35, which has conicided with some of our biggest months on record,” he said. “A massive part of our growth has been applying our social-first thinking to platforms outside of social.”
Sparro’s Morris and Cameron Bryant
The Jack Nimble appointments coincide with the launch of its new creator/influencer services, and expansion into an integrated offering across radio, TV, OOH and other above-the-line channels.
Mullane said clients are open to, and often love, trying new concepts on social, finding out what their audience responds to, and then scaling production up as far as TVCs or OOH – and the new appointments will be key to growing these relationships.
“…they live and breath social media and also bring a wealth of knowledge working across integrated campaigns for some of the biggest brands in Australia,” he said.
The agency group was acquired in January by global performance media agency Brainlabs, as it looked to expand its APAC footprint.
“Brands are crying out for proactive, smart, hands-on marketing partners. More and more, they want those partners to be operating to business-level objectives and not just digital KPIs,” co-founder Cameron Bryant said at the time.
“This acquisition plays perfectly into that. It extends Brainlabs’ significant international presence to further strengthen its appeal to global advertisers, and it enables us to offer clients international coverage, not to mention the incredible career opportunities for our people. We already know we’re the market leader in performance, and together, we can provide greater depth, services and technology that sets us even further apart.”
Since then, Sparro and Jack Nimble have made two other senior hires, plus 12 mid-weight appointments across paid media, SEO, graphic design, creative, social management and affiliate marketing.
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Lauren McNamara is the associate editor at Mumbrella, covering the agency beat. She joined in November 2022 as editorial assistant, after completing a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) at UTS.
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Angus Mullane
Cameron Bryant
Jack Nimble
Kiki Jones
Lauren Nixon-Smith
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Morgen Mathews
Morris Bryant
Sparro
Sparro by Brainlabs
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