Why Klook chose a fully independent agency village
Travel booking platform Klook has announced a new local agency village completely made up of independents. Mia Bacarro, the brand’s senior marketing manager of ANZ, talked Mumbrella through the decision-making process.
Aiming to bolster the brand’s presence in Australia and New Zealand, on Monday Klook named Hatched as its new media partner, Paper Moose as its creative partner, The Attention Seeker as its social agency, and has retained The Lucid Agency as its PR partner.
The decision to choose new agency partners came as the travel brand found itself at an “opportune time” to double down on brand-building, according to Bacarro. She said “the time was now” to get audiences to learn more about what Klook is, what it offers, and what the brand stands for.
The decision to choose independent agencies was both deliberate from the start and just “fell into place” through the lengthy process.
“It stemmed from knowing from the get-go that we don’t have the biggest of budgets. We are a challenger brand, we’re not a magnetic brand just yet where we can bring in the biggest agencies,” Bacarro told Mumbrella.
“So it started from a practical perspective, but then when we really looked about what we needed, like we’re a small team, we’re really hungry for growth, and we don’t like to do things the typical way, the more people we talked to and teams we got in touch we, we started to realise there were like-minded organisations and agencies out there trying to achieve the same thing.
“We thought that partnering with indies meant they could be invested in our own growth, and we could grow side by side together.”
She said the instant connection felt with the four agencies was important, as “it was a lot about chemistry and seeing how [the] teams could collaborate”.
“We needed to find not just collaborators, but in many ways, almost teachers. We are a young team, we’re looking to learn, we’re looking to really upskill in these key areas,” Bacarro said.
“And these agencies came to the table with a sort of similar desire to learn themselves, but also had a really great way of uncomplicating the marketing concepts out there, in a way that we are ready for and excited about.”
Hatched’s managing partner and head of strategy, Danni Dimitri, said from the moment the team met with Klook, “it was clear” the brand was aligned with the agency, because of its “great people, a dynamic business and a genuine focus on the customer experience”.
“We are thrilled to be part of the indie agency collective Klook has selected,” she said in a media release.
“The integrated planning we’ve spent the last few months collaborating on is about to shake up the market in all the right ways.”
Paper Moose’s founder and CEO, Nick Hunter, seconded Dimitri’s point, adding: “We love working with challenger brands and like-minded agency partners and are looking forward to what is to come.”
Meanwhile, The Lucid Agency was first appointed mid-2024, and has since been retained as the brand’s media relations partner, and The Attention Seeker has been chosen for social duties.
Work has commenced for the agency village, with a new global brand platform and campaign due to launch next month.
When teasing what we can expect to see from the new campaign, Bacarro said it won’t be a huge change for the brand, but rather will provide “step closer to understanding” Klook’s approach to travel.
“It’ll be about why we think travel is so important to life,” she told Mumbrella, particularly to the target audience of Millennials and Gen Z.
“We recently did a study on how travel is almost like therapy for this generation of young travellers. So this touches a bit on the opportunity for travel to really enrich your life in a way that’s still hopefully fun and engaging,” she said.
She also said the Klook team is within that age range — the oldest in the team in 40 — so they are “like-minded” and hope to make the work as fun as possible, “because [they] know that’s what’s important in order to create a fun campaign”.
She said: “The more we take ourselves too seriously, the less authentic it rings. So we’re having fun.”
And the pros of an indie roster mean that the brand and agencies are working as a true collective, she told Mumbrella.
“We’re all pretty dynamic, and so far, it’s been very collaborative. I come from years of experience working with big holding companies where the process was quite long and there were so many layers of stakeholders to get through,” Bacarro said.
“I felt like, so far with our agencies, we’ve been able to achieve so many things in record time. The level of synchronicity across the agencies is super exciting.”
She did explain, however, that the ultimate ambition is to be the “go-to destination” for travel for the target audiences, giving them a chance to curate their experiences and services from our place.
“That’s what we try to be and try to do,” she said.
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Lauren McNamara was the associate editor at Mumbrella. She joined in November 2022 as editorial assistant, after completing a Bachelor of Communications (Journalism) at UTS. She left Mumbrella in August 2025.
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Danni Dimitri
Hatched
Klook
Mia Bacarro
Nick Hunter
Paper Moose
The Attention Seeker
The Lucid Agency
Go Hatched Sydney! Keep that momentum going guys.
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