Connecting Plots Acquires Indie Agency Two G’s
Two G’s became part of Connecting Plots on Tuesday 11 April, with their current clients including Amazon Prime Video, Mad Mex and Penguin Books Australia.
John and Matt are both highly awarded integrated Creative Directors with more than 15 years experience who both live and breathe brand, digital and social worlds to create culture-shaping, made-for-channel creative.
Matt and John are a true representation of our old meets new philosophy. They bring a unique mix of brand and creative with channel-centric thinking across social, digital and technology. We’re thrilled to have them join us.
Connecting Plots Co-Founder, Tom Phillips
The pair have extensive experience at both traditional and digital-centric agencies including VML where they were paired together to creatively lead the agency’s major accounts. Between them they have worked with clients from all categories, including McDonalds, Toyota and Coca-Cola, and won all the major awards – with highlights including multiple Cannes Lions and golds at One Show.
We’re thrilled to be joining Tom, Dave, Sophia and the team. They’re fantastic people making fantastic work and we believe in their vision for the agency and can’t wait to help bring to life their new ‘Imagination In Every Impression’ positioning.
Connecting Plots Creative Partners, Matt Geersen & John Gault
Connecting Plots Take On Wasted Ad Dollars Launch of New Technology Platform; a.glo
The launch of a.glo supports the agency’s new positioning, ‘Imagination In Every Impression’ which challenges the industry’s old habits and specifically targets the recurring and systematic problem of wasting advertising dollars by using creative that isn’t fit for purpose.
In the current economy, proving a greater ROI has never been more important. This point has been further highlighted by the recent Next&Co Annual Digital Media Wastage Report which showed that approximately 41% of digital ad spend in the last year was “wasted”. Increasingly complex channel requirements means that clients need more tailored creative to ensure they are performing in these channels to achieve stronger results.
If you think about Meta’s ecosystem alone there are upwards of 20 ad formats. And against those formats, there are 6 different strategic objectives you can buy against that each require tailored creative solutions. Anything from different messaging, allowances for sounds, moving image, different calls-to action and more. Multiply that again by Snap, TikTok and YouTube, and this number goes to well above 40. So a ‘matching luggage’ approach of creating a 30” TVC and a 15” and 6” cutdown simply doesn’t cut the mustard.
Connecting Plots Co-Founder, Tom Phillips
Phillips believes the siloed approach of how advertising, media and production agencies are set up is to blame and is leaving money on the table.
Clients are approaching us directly or via our platform partnerships to fix the same problem – their creative for these channels isn’t performing and is often an afterthought.
Connecting Plots Co-Founder, Tom Phillips
The new platform a.glo combines creative, brand, media and production thinking to deliver full-funnel, fit-for-channel and fit-for-purpose creative solutions that are proven to work.
But this specialist service is not new. The team behind a.glo have been doing this in partnership with Meta, Snap and other platforms for over 5 years across a variety of verticals including Financial Services, Consumer Tech, FMCG, Retail and Automotive.
The service utilises best practice marketing diagnostics to help unearth where the wastage is and what the opportunities are in order to devise a strategic roadmap based on the nuances of achieving the business objectives within different channels. Clients’ existing creative and assets can then be re-engineered to create optimised best practice creative that deliver to the varying strategic objectives without the need for extensive production requirements.
And the return far outweighs the investment.
A great example of a.glo in motion is where we worked with Meta across 12 auto brands to test platform optimised content vs. non-optimised content. Meta found that the majority of adverts uploaded to Facebook and Instagram weren’t created social-first, resulting in huge inefficiencies and poor performance. By putting it through the a.glo process, we were able to increase reach by 200% for the same budget, reduce cost per lead by 50%, reduce cost per finance conversion by 45% and reduce cost per model page visit by 54%.
Connecting Plots Co-Founder, Tom Phillips
a.glo can be extended to platform partners, direct clients and agencies to ensure best-practice social and digital can be easily accessible for brands across Asia Pacific.
Read the full interview with Co-Founder Tom Phillips on Mediaweek →.
Royal Agricultural Society of NSW Appoints Connecting Plots as Agency of Record Following Competitive Pitch
The Royal Agricultural Society Of NSW has been an influential force in the establishment and progression of Australian agriculture since its foundation in 1822. The first project, which is currently in development with Connecting Plots, will be the iconic Sydney Royal Easter Show.
We were really impressed with the way Connecting Plots used research and data to inform their creative approach and their design and production thinking to crack our brief. They showed a great deal of care and insight in how to bring their thinking to life perfectly in every channel and every touchpoint.
RAS Head of Marketing, Frances Jewell
Connecting Plots has been tasked with the branding and development of a creative platform that encapsulates the spirit of the Sydney Royal Easter Show and celebrates everything that makes it an event everyone can enjoy.
It’s a real privilege to partner with such an important non-for-profit organisation. Many of us in the agency are from rural communities and some have agricultural backgrounds, so it’s good for the soul to be helping promote the great work of the Royal Agricultural Society of NSW and its pinnacle event, the Sydney Royal Easter Show.
Connecting Plots Co-Founder, Tom Phillips
The Sydney Royal Easter Show will run from Thursday 6 April to Monday 17 April.
Connecting Plots Challenges Old Industry Habits With New Positioning
The new positioning, ‘Imagination in every impression’ addresses the issue at the heart of the industry’s current struggles – that a great idea, although fundamental, isn’t enough in isolation. Both brands and agencies now need a relentless focus and the expertise to bring ideas to life perfectly in all of the channels consumers are actually spending time.
The agency’s founders, Dave Jansen and Tom Phillips, believe that everything a brand does tells its story. And without connecting these stories through all touch points of a brands ecosystem, brands are leaving money on the table with inefficient and ineffective creative.
The two are taking cues from the global decline of creative effectiveness (which has been steadily happening over the past 10+ years), which coincides with the growth of the major platforms, gaming and digital communities – the places which command the lion’s share of consumer screen attention. But rather than reject this trend, Connecting Plots has embraced it to better deliver on its clients’ needs.
We’re hearing marketers say the same thing time and time again. Their agency presents interesting thinking but then they only create a TV ad and matching-luggage or cut-downs. This isn’t an approach that is fit for purpose in 2022, and it highlights how many agencies are unable to adapt to modern media. It’s essential that creative ideas are built to stretch and adapt across screens and platforms.
Connecting Plots Co-Founder, Tom Phillips
Both founders firmly believe that the path forward isn’t just about trying something new. Instead, they’re taking an old-school meets new approach to business and fusing the proven and timeless principles of creative effectiveness with a healthy obsession with modern day channels.
This isn’t just big claims – we’ve been pioneering this approach for a decade and the proof is in the results we are getting for clients. TV is still important, however the focus from a creative perspective needs to mirror that of where the audience is spending most of their time and where the client is spending the majority of their media budget. It’s essential we no longer match luggage, but adapt to the core delivery mechanism for the majority of creative campaigns.
Connecting Plots Co-Founder, Dave Jansen
And they’re proving their approach works with clients like Fantastic Furniture (winner of an APAC Effie Award in Retail), which reduced negative perceptions of cheap and increased consideration by +5% and Tourism Australia, whose immersive 18-month long content platform ‘Australia in 8D’ reached over 226+ million people and contributed to the government agency’s $300+ million in earned media while international borders were closed, fuelling later demand for an Aussie holiday.
Whether it’s activated on Fortnight, YouTube or in an eDM, the experience needs to earn attention, make you feel something and be consistent in the way it shows up across all nooks and crannies and channels that the brand is playing in. As an agency founded out of a production company we have a deep love and understanding for TV, film and ads and their role in signaling to customers that a brand is legit. We just want brands to look beyond that to find a different starting point for building campaigns, so they can work harder.
Connecting Plots Co-Founder, Dave Jansen
Both partners come from backgrounds in media and social, entertainment and production, together winning a International Emmy Award™ for #7 Days Later where the story was told in different ways across TV, social, radio and digital and proving a sum-of-the-parts approach in storytelling worked. This is where the name Connecting Plots came from.
Having the media, creative and production thinking all working together from the start has given us something unique. It means it’s easier to be inventive with what we need to say, who we want to say it to, where we want it to go and how we are going to make it
Connecting Plots Co-Founder, Tom Phillips
Since the agency opened its doors in late 2018, Connecting plots has earned itself an enviable client portfolio including Fantastic Furniture, Tourism Australia, Menulog, Lendlease, Westinghouse, Nestlé, Mitsubishi Heavy Industries and Brown-Forman.
Read the full interview with Co-Founders Tom Phillips and Dave Jansen on Mumbrella →.