Accenture Song’s acquisition of The Lumery is the culmination of a three-year-long “courtship” with the Melbourne-based martech consultancy, Mark Green tells Mediaweek.
It’s a pivotal time for the agency to strengthen its marketing technology offering in Australia, Accenture Song’s AUNZ lead says, because the client demand is there: “Within Song, we just had too many clients asking and not enough people to actually deliver in the way that we wanted to.”
The acquisition comes as global spend on martech is predicted to surge by 64% to $216 billion by 2027. Meanwhile, Accenture’s own research shows that over half of global customers have expressed a desire for companies to respond faster to their changing needs and expectations.
Green says that the move was a timely and opportune evolution for the tech-powered creative consultancy Accenture Song, which has been growing to deliver end-to-end customer transformation.
The partnership will see Lumery’s team of 80 across offices in Melbourne and Sydney in Australia and Bengaluru in India merge with Accenture Song’s marketing practice.
“We believe in a world where a brand is influenced by marketing, at both an awareness, but also at a personal level,” says Green.
“There’s no reason why the quality of that relationship can’t be truly great – as good at a brand level as it can be at an acquisition and personal level. We felt like we were stronger in one part versus the other.”
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According to co-founder and CEO of The Lumery, Rajan Kumar, Australian marketers face unique challenges, including wielding the same martech as their global counterparts, yet needing to work harder for conversions simply due to the smaller population.
As a result, Kumar believes Australian marketers are particularly forward-thinking in their desire to test and learn in order to remain competitive. “Because we have to,” he says.
“It might be easier to work in a global market where you’ve got 100 million consumers that you can talk to. That doesn’t happen here.”
Kumar describes martech as a “critical component” in the modern marketing mix.
“We interact with brands largely now through digital channels through connected channels. If a brand wants to deliver this ideal experience through all the various mediums it has access to, and ultimately where we, as consumers, are interacting with them, then you have to wrangle data and tech.
“You’ve got to be really thoughtful about how you talk to your consumers, how you leverage data, how you leverage things like personalisation. That’s all ultimately going to deliver those small, incremental wins across the experience.”
Green echoes the need to provide strong martech consultancy capabilities in the Australian advertising industry, citing the vital role martech will play as a mechanism in shaping the future of its businesses – from improving customer relationships to driving acquisitions.
“It’s one thing to have the technology. It’s another to actually know how to use it effectively,” he adds.
“That’s the question that we’re coming across more often than not, and clients are really looking for answers … That’s why we got very keen to bring Raj and his team to the table. It brings a bigger firepower to our clients who need it.”
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Since its inception in 2017, The Lumery has positioned itself as a provider of complementary martech ecosystem relationships, helping its clients achieve transformation through technology for scale and mass customisation.
“If I think about why we started The Lumery in the first place, it was answering that question,” says Kumar.
“There’s no shortage of desire, there’s no shortage of ambition. Everyone’s bought into the idea of customer experience at scale, and leveraging better technology to fuel that. But how do you do that tactically, day in, day out? How do you connect, at times, what is a very disparate and fragmented ecosystem?
“That’s the place The Lumery has been operating for nearly seven years, and we’ve been really successful.”
In Green’s view, The Lumery marks a key differentiator for Accenture Song, one that reinforces the company’s identity as a unique blend of creative consulting and technology.
“We’re confident that we’re on to something really interesting with the Accenture Song model,” he says.
“I think a lot of agencies [with consultancies] have left that technology piece alone. Now it’s informing such a major part of the connection with the customer that it can’t be ignored.”
Green continues: “That’s why we sold our business to Accenture Interactive back in the day: we saw that opportunity.
“Thankfully, it’s materialised, because we’re doing more influential work because of it.”
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Top Image: Mark Green and Rajan Kumar