The White Agency and Grey Group Australia rebrand as whiteGREY
WPP’s The White Agency and Grey Group Australia have merged as whiteGrey.
The rebrand formalises a relationship which began in November, when the two agencies merged into combined office spaces in WPP’s Sydney and Melbourne offices.
One team: Worboys (left) and Joyce
The White Agency had previously been part of STW Group while Grey is owned by by WPP. WPP took full ownership of STW last year.
As part of the rebrand, the agencies will now work under the whiteGREY name, with one financial structure, and offer a range of specialist services to existing and new clients.
The agency will be led by joint CEOs Paul Worboys, former chief operating officer of Grey Group Australia, and Miles Joyce, who has led The White Agency for the past decade. Joyce was previously founder and MD of NetX, which was credited by many as Australia’s first full-scale digital agency.
Commenting on the merger and rebrand, Joyce said: “Combining our brands really formalises the close working relationship we’ve had since November last year, when we first decided to come together as a collection of specialists.
“We’ve had six months of working together, side by side, both in our Sydney and Melbourne offices to really get to know each other.
“It became quickly obvious that our two agencies were not only culturally aligned, but provided complementary specialist skills that had the potential to produce far better outcomes for clients and staff,” he said.
“Blending our brand names and financial structure is the logical next step in this process.”
While they will be offering combined services to clients, Worboys – who has been with Grey for the past seven years – said the move was “not about creating another integrated agency”.
“This is about specialists within the technology, experience and ideas /creative space working together where possible, and separately if required,” he said.
“After six months of harnessing our joint capabilities, we’re already creating a culture that unites these specialists and inspires creativity. We’re excited about now formalising that relationship and introducing our new brand to the marketplace, while fostering a stronger, more nimble business built from our collective strengths.”
The rebrand is not the first for Grey, after it was briefly rebadged as JayGrey when Jay Furby joined as creative director in 2011.
The agency then rebranded back to Grey in 2013, when Furby left the business.
Mike Connaghan, WPP Australia NZ CEO said the new branding will “finally allow the two agencies to present a united front to the Australian market”.
“Ongoing change in the marketplace has seen increased interest in morphing ideas and technology. The move to combine The White Agency and Grey is one driven by our desire to provide these solutions by having people, technology and great ideas all working as one.”
“Both The White Agency and Grey are powerful players on their own, but whiteGREY is a stronger offering,” he said.
This is th exact reason why the monkeys and accenture thing is so exciting.
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Pale Grey
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Wasn’t the 1st April last month?
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50 shades of white and greyness?
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A whiter shade of grey?
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Does anyone over there expect to be taken seriously with this announcement?
Either run an agency with some semblance of credibility or go run The Onion.
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Straight from the usual playbook. I wish there was a bit more originality and intelligence to the STW (oops WPP) press releases.
Step 1: Move agencies into the same location, typically a weaker agency shares with a stronger one.
Step 2: Merge the P&L for both, not “officially” but for all intents and purposes. Of course, to employees you talk about this stage the importance of maintaining both brands.
Step 3: Mike announces to the market that merging the agencies to create a better offering that the clients are asking for. In fact, it means headcount reduction across the business to get those “efficiencies” though sell it internally as shifting resources to make the agency stronger overall.
Step 4: Within 2 years eradicate one of the agencies completely, typically with the leader of one of the agencies managed out after the first12 months.
Step 5: Then blame the market conditions for lack of organic growth in order to keep CEO job.
Step 6: It all goes to shit. Merge and repeat.
Thing I am wrong? Search STW on this site. Zoe, what about more journalism and recount the history of this STW manoeuvre, would be of a lot of interest to us shareholders.
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Bring back GayJrey!
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What?
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Michael Jackson.
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Enero stole that playbook!
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Best of luck to all involved, but LOL at joint-CEOs.
You’ve got to make the hard calls early. And deciding on joint-CEOs isn’t doing that.
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STWPP is rumoured to have considered these other mergers in the past ;
Grey Tongue
GreyMindShare
Tongue@Ogilvy
WhiteGreyY&R
Added Tongue Value
HeyGrey
Hill + Tongue Strategies
GreyHuman
MaverickTongue
GreyPlay
WhiteWunderman
TheGreyAgency
Greyworks
Someone should build a STWPP agency consolidation tool as a web service. The shareholders would love it.
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Jeez, I hope they buy Lavender. Oh, and the Red Agency. What about Blue Hive?
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what does this mean?
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seems like a strange move – rebranding definitely on the cards at some future stage.
Lighter grey perhaps?
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With the creativity demonstrated by the new name we look forward to the garage sale.
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Blue Hive is no longer. GTB now
WPP Spends a lot of money on signage and stationery. Who said print is dead?
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Within 2yrs the White folks will be gone and they will rebrand back to Grey. Take it from a person who worked in digital agencies for 15yrs. The digital ship has sailed and it’s happened very quickly. Salesforce, Shopify, Wix and many more tools plus Social media have killed bespoke builds. Everything is digital, and if you are a creative agency, that doesn’t consider a digital idea, you wouldn’t still be around. In the end the creative idea trumps all. All my developer mates are hurting. Watch this space for more digital agencies getting swallowed or shutting shop.
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