The IMAA, the national, not for profit industry association for independent media agencies launched last year.
Since then it has continued to grow its membership base and make a series of big announcements, including its trade credit deal and a number of new media partners.
Mediaweek has been profiling members of the IMAA – previous features can be found here. This week we spoke to Nick Behr, CEO and founder of Kaimera.
The Sydney-based independent media agency has recently been named among AFR‘s Fast Starters for 2021, the list of the fastest growing companies in Australia. Behr said that it makes Kaimera reflect on what they’ve done over the last couple of years, but also the future.
“For us it just makes us think whats next. Now we have made the list, whats next?”
Kaimera was founded by Behr and Trent McMillan in October 2016, and the agency now has a growing list of clients including Bell Direct, Koch Media and Yalumba. It has also won new business with the likes of ResDiary, Britbox, Campos and UnderArmour. Behr said that one of the keys to success was making sure that Kaimera was a full service media agency.
“We could see the writing on the wall and to be a digital ad agency, we didn’t believe was the right thing to do. We didn’t think digital was going to be the be all and end all moving forward. To be honest, it was probably the best thing that we ever did because the market is changing. It’s very hard to really reach people and get people’s attention while looking at digital unless you’re at the bottom of the funnel. We’ve seen a big shift with a lot of our clients moving towards brands and a little bit away from activation. They’re starting to realise that our connections build a brand that will succeed in the long term and we’re helping a lot of our clients do that.”
Another key success to the agency’s growth according to Behr was its approach during the Covid-19 lockdowns, which Behr said they treated like a free kick.
“We went in the office really early. We actually moved offices on the 15th of June, in 2020. A lot of people were still really worried and concerned about what to do at that point. We were in the office for almost an entire year until the second lockdown happened in Sydney, so we believe that gave us a huge amount of momentum in market. Because we were there collaborating together, we already moved forward. I honestly believe that was a core part of why we did so well last financial year.
“This financial year was a little bit different because we had no choice – everyone was at home. But even now we make some decisions around what we need to do for the business to get to the next step of where we need to get to. Currently, we’re at about 24 people and we’re still looking to hire a couple more. We’ve done a very good job in terms of retaining staff and doing the right thing. I honestly believe working in the office for that period helped that retention as well. But like everyone in the market it is a tough, tough market when it comes to talent at the moment, everyone’s in the same position. Everyone’s really busy. Everyone’s doing really well. Everyone’s really tired. Everyone wants a break. And everyone hasn’t got enough people.”
The agency was founded on the premise of creating a transparent media agency, but Behr said while that remains a core focus, Kaimera has begun to re-position itself in the market with a new brand.
“Moving a bit away from trust and transparency even though it is absolutely core. But we believe it’s table stakes now and we’ve been voted the most transparent agency three years in a row from the Media i Survey.
“We have repositioned to media made simple, it’s about taking the complexity out of media. I think the industry is very much to blame for that with all the acronyms we’ve created and everything else. But the clients that we work with, which are smaller marketing teams, they just want an agency that they can trust and take the complexity out of media and make it simple for them to understand. So our positioning in market now and has been for the last six, seven months, is media made simple.”
Behr said that another important thing at Kaimera was the internal focus on areas such as diversity and sustainability.
“We’re certified with CDP which was quite a big deal to be able to go through that process. Things like sustainability and diversification we do everything we can. I think it’s very easy for the big guys to talk about it because they can put money behind it, but for us to actually do it and make a difference, that has to come from the top. So our leadership team has to be the ones that want to drive it. We’ve made a real effort to do that.”
IMAA
Kaimera was a founding member of the IMAA and Behr said that the organisation does a good job dealing with a diverse group of indies.
“The independent agencies are all very different. I’ve worked in four of the six holding groups and they’re pretty much the same. When you go into the world of Indies everyone’s different, and they’re all based on the personality of the owner. There aren’t that many indies that have had people who have run agencies or holding groups. I think there’s only a handful of us. It makes it for real diversification. When you’re talking about how business operates, particularly SMEs, it’s just very, very different to a holding group.
“The IMAA has completely evolved into something else, which has been unbelievable. It has really given indies a real chance to not just survive but thrive as well.”
