Page 12 - AdNews Mar-Apr 2021
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                  Feature
 The MLA lamb campaign, Supercheap Auto, BCF, UBank.
 probably take a few elbows to get right, felt like a bigger transformative idea than picking a more well-trodden path.
“We’ve never been afraid to swing for the fence and that was a good example of doing that. Three and a half years later, here we are.”
Green says the acquisition came together with some help from former client Mark Buckman who had been working with Interactive in Europe. Today, Buckman is a senior advisor with the local Accenture Interactive team.
“I had been working within Accenture Interactive across Europe and witnessed the tectonic changes impacting the industry and the emergence of a new breed of agency: part tech, part consultancy, part agency that could deliver digitally enabled integrated customer expe- rience,” Buckman says.
“I had introduced Karmarama to Accenture Interactive in the UK and saw many parallels in Australia and having worked closely with The Monkeys while at Telstra, and knowing Accenture’s pursuit of leading creative agencies, The Monkeys was an obvious match.”
At the time of the acquisition, many questioned whether The Monkeys would be able to maintain the same creative control and culture it had as an independent. With many mergers and acquisitions, these tend to be thrown out the window and was one of the reasons that the co-found- ers denied offers from others to purchase their indie hot shop.
Scott Nowell, group chief creative officer (CCO) and co-founder of The Monkeys and group CCO at Accenture Interactive ANZ, says the discus- sions were different with Accenture.
“I think for Mark, Justin and I, we started the company as an alterna- tive to traditional advertising agencies and we wanted to do things dif- ferently. We did that,” Nowell says.
“We had other discussions, but it felt like those were leading to the same thing. Whereas the discussion with Accenture, we got in the room
 























































































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