Audience Group managing director Tom Evans established the agency in 2016 with business partner James McDonald.
Since then, the company has developed and recognised as one of the fast-growing businesses for the past few years.
Evans spoke to Mediaweek about the Brisbane-based agency’s rapid growth, data’s importance, and his optimistic projection for expansion and innovations for the year ahead.
The origin of Audience Group and its early years
Evans and McDonald ran brand consultancy Blue Pencil before starting the agency. They worked with clients about to launch a new brand or that needed perception issues resolved, which Evans said generally resulted in clients spending more money on media and advertising.
The managing director said: “We were becoming increasingly frustrated with sort of partners inability to see the data or opportunity on behalf of a client.
“Clients are generating so much data of their own now that relying upon agencies and publishers to tell them who their audiences are to us was redundant. So, we started to throw around this idea of if we were to look to buy and manage media on behalf of clients, what would that look like.”
“In trying to resolve some of those frustrations, it was apparent that there was nobody in the market trying to do what we wanted to do. So, we decided to do it ourselves,” he added.
As the managing director, Evans described it as “non-stop” working with clients and staff as the company grows.
“The fast growth has come from a real focus on product development, from clients and understanding what clients require.
“One of the joys of being an independent agency is that if we want to do something, we can go and do it,” he said.
Evans explained this allows the agency to respond quickly to opportunities that come up, either from problems clients are trying to resolve or finding addressable solutions in the data generated by the client.
Audience Group and data
Evans said that Audience Group’s specialisation is their work with data and noted their tag line: “don’t buy media, buy your audience”, which he said focuses on helping clients use the data they have to better plan and measure their media investment, Evans said.
“Quite often, it’s helping build a tunnel between the marketing department and IT and helping make sense of all the generated data,” he explained.
With the operationalisation of that data, Evans said they could help clients be more profitable with their advertising investment, understand what leads to profitable outcomes, and ensure the investment is incremental and nudges the right people.
Foundation clients and recent wins
Audience Group has clients across the country in Perth, Melbourne, and Sydney. Evans noted: “Probably only 30% of our revenue comes out of Brisbane. We have a reasonable equal apportionment of revenues from the other major capital cities.”
The agency’s longstanding clients include Goodstart Early Learning for more than five years and the law firm Slater and Gordon, which has been with the agency for three years.
Evans said of the partnership with the law firm: “Bear in mind we’re only five to six years old, so they’re a long-term relationship for us. And we have a group of other clients now that are probably just approaching the three-year mark with us.”
Meanwhile, the agency’s most recent client wins include Vail Resorts and Thermomix.
The impact of Covid on the business
Evans shared that the company “fared really well through the pandemic.”
“That’s because a lot of the work that we do, which is helping clients to be more profitable with their budget,” he said.
The managing editor continued: “sometimes involved the digitisation of investments or understanding the data and making those dollars work a little harder with things that became increasingly pertinent to clients during the pandemic.”
Evans added: “It was good for us because things that clients required and wanted more of were what we could help them do. So, we enjoyed some growth through the pandemic and had a lot of clients approach us for help during that time.”
Expansion, growth, and the outlook for the year ahead
Evans noted that their outlook for the year ahead is to continue expansion and growth, including moving into new office space.
He said that they are replanning the office layout to make room for more of their staff, adding: “Some might say that was poorly planned, but I think we didn’t quite allow for the growth we’ve seen in the past six months.”
Evans also shared that the agency is beginning work on a custom bidding algorithm, as well as the use of AI combined with the data they are collecting for their clients in the next two to three years.
“It’s enabling us to test and learn extremely quickly because of the machine learning components, which is helping to accelerate some of our own learnings. That’s going to be our focus, certainly for the next couple of years,” the managing director added.
On The IMAA
Evans noted that being part of the IMAA has provided the Audience Group with plenty of benefits, particularly for staff members.
“There’s some ongoing training and development for staff members, which is extremely useful and beneficial, particularly for some of the more junior members of the team,” he said.
The managing director noted that the IMAA provides good networking opportunities with other group members and access to media partnerships.
Evans also said that being a member of the IMAA has given them access to products on a discounted level that some of the more prominent organisations enjoy.
“This has enabled us to widen our service offering and increase access to some of the tools in the kit that are required to do the job effectively,” he added.
Evans said the idea an independent agency needs to be part of a larger organisation to access specific tools is not the case with the group. “We can do that now through the partnerships that we’ve got with the IMAA,” he added.
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Top image: Tom Evans