Co.gency recently marked its seventh year in business. Over the years, the full-service agency has helped brands with strategic and conceptual thinking to overcome challenges and take on new opportunities.
Managing director Jon Bonwick spoke to Mediaweek about the agency’s evolution over the years, bouncing back from the pandemic, and how being part of the IMAA has benefitted the agency.
The evolution of Co.gency
Bonwick said: “They say the first seven are the hardest. Hopefully, we’ve cracked that and will be here for a while.
“We started with five staff seven years ago with a group of three partners in the business,” he recalled. “We’re all still here; we have an office in Brisbane and Sydney. It’s been a whirlwind journey.”
Bonwick noted that the Co.gency had seen plenty of change over the past seven years. When we started, the agency was very above-the-line heavy. We did a little bit of creative, analytics, and data. We’re much bigger; we’ve now got 25 staff – a raft of different talents.”
“We like to call ourselves a raft of technology and special skills to overcome challenges the clients have. Now, I feel the business has evolved to be much more involved with our clients. We don’t want to call them clients all the time, but their partners.”
Bonwick noted the agency has adapted to the changes in the industry over the years with the development of new technology, techniques and the changing demands of clients.
“That’s the adaption we’ve seen in our business; we’ve had to evolve and be agile and bring different skill sets into the business to manage our clients’ requests and needs.”
The agency’s areas of expertise
Co.gency has a wide range of different areas of expertise, according to the managing director, including strategy, creative, digital, data (working with partners such as HubSpot and Salesforce), media planning and buying.
Bonwick noted that they are in the top 3% of Google preferred partners and are a Facebook partner. “That’s where we’ve had to find social and content people to work across this diverse skill set,” he said.
Bonwick also shared that the agency is expanded its specialisations following a recent brief on large-scale TV production. He said that while they don’t yet have the capacity or facilities to have a full production company, they hope to partner up with someone in the space.
“Working with the other Indies and how we can help benefit each other in understanding different processes and systems that we use,” he added.
Strong foundational client base and welcomed new additions
Among the foundational clients that still work with Co.gency today are ASICS shoes, Cleveland Golf – owned by Sumitomo Rubber and lolly brand Haribo.
Recently, the agency welcomed several new clients, including German Personal protective equipment company UVEX, Southern Cross University, betting platform Bet Deck, eToro and Halo Food Co.
“We’ve had some good news in the last four or five months. We’ve got more than 80 clients in total,” Bonwick added.
Riding out the pandemic
On the pandemic, Bonwick said they were no different from other agencies impacted by the lockdowns.
“I had a good team around me in management to work through each step. As a business owner, you constantly have to make decisions, and you will be overwhelmed.”
Bonwick said that quick reactions had to take place from discussions with their landlord to talks with partners. He explained: “No one knew what was going to happen. We’re quick off the mark in evaluating the potential risks, and that set us up in a pretty positive space.”
During the lockdown, the Co.gency team set up at home and worked cloud-based. Bonwick said that ensuring his staff’s welfare and working environment was key for him as a manager. He noted that to keep morale up, they had activities and games online.
Bonwick noted that they had taken a slightly different approach from agencies that offer four days a week or extended leave. He said: “We’re a 365, 24-hour-a-day business now because digital doesn’t sleep, eCom doesn’t sleep,” adding that Co.gency offers work-from-home one day a week.
Bonwick also noted that they have a collaborative approach to work and have had no pushback from staff about wanting to come back into the office. “It’s the opposite. But in doing that, we do regular lunch-and-learns in the office. We play soccer every Tuesday. We’ve got events every six or eight weeks,” he said.
Bonwick shared that they are diversifying their staff with new graduate hires to the business. He said: “We’re trying to give people still greater flexibility that comes with trust, and I think that we’re a 365 day to business in our space. When the Boxing Day sales start, we need to have gears going live.”
“In a full-service agency where digitals are at the heart and data and analytics, you need to have your finger on the pulse. If you’ve got people constantly not in the office and not collaborating, I think it becomes challenging,” he added.
The outlook for Co.gency
Co.gency has some exciting things happening in the year ahead, including building out its AI offering, business intelligence offering and data business.
Bonwick said that as a Domo partner (Domo is a data visualisation business intelligence tool), they have recently worked on building a data warehouse and collecting a business’s data and building out their business reporting on the platform.
“We’re adding another element to business because it always leads to insights, which helps us decide how to find more customers. We think it’s a right fit for us to add this,”
Bonwick also noted that they partnered with CRM and marketing automation platform Hubspot. He said: “Once again, we believe that’s another great fit because it understands more and more around the customer.
“If you can understand the customer, how to talk to them, and evaluate, the media and advertising part in creative only gains from understanding various products and can use the information to make a campaign stronger,” he added.
How IMAA membership has benefitted Co.gency
Co.gency was among the first agencies to sign up to the IMAA. Bonwick noted that the agency had seen several benefits.
First is being a platform for media partners to tell their stories to the agencies. He said: “The media outlets use the IMAA on their Monday webinars to get their message across because there are many media partners out there selling to agencies.”
Bonwick noted that the IMAA gave independent agencies a voice, particularly during the tender process for the NSW government’s $78 million master media expression of interest. He said that while the agencies did not get the result they wanted, their collective disappointment in the NSW government was made known.
See also: IMAA responds to NSW Government’s appointment of OMD to its $70 million media account
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Bonwick highlighted that the IMAA has allowed independent agency leaders and business owners to discuss the challenges of running a small to medium-sized business.
“It allows us to bounce different ideas off each other within the industry and help people do things potentially different for the better. I’m all for that, the ability to have conversations with like-minded people,” he said, praising the IMAA for also holding fun events for its members.
Bonwick also said that the IMAA network is a place of positivity in which they share each other’s victories. He added: “It means there is a gravitation towards a smaller, nimble, agile approach.”
