Innocean Australia Has Brought “Missing Pieces Together” With Right People, Tools, Clients

Innocean Australia has spent the last four years transforming its offering, leadership, and creative ambition. According to CEO Jasmin Bedir, the shift hasn’t been easy at times, but is now delivering results.

“Agency turnarounds are hard. Much harder than starting something new,” she told LBB. 

“Resilience was a major factor and not giving up. We had to work against a decade of perceptions and that is still happening. I’m proud of what we have accomplished. There are not many agencies that can deliver end-to-end marketing at the calibre we’re delivering it now. We finally have all the missing pieces together in terms of the people, the tools and the clients.”

Growing The Team

In December, Brendan Willenberg made the jump from Cummins&Partners to Innocean, joining as executive creative director, replacing predecessor Wez Hawes.

Entering the role six months ago, he said job one was to “codify the spirit of the agency in a positioning.”

“We believe in fearless creativity. Ideas that challenge the brand, category, or problem in ways that seem counterintuitive but, when backed by insight, strat and data, [they] have a multiplier effect,” he said.

“We talk about this as a self-selecting positioning and in the last six months, we’ve met brands who it wasn’t right for – but more importantly, lots of brands that are all in.

“Everything is trending better than even we imagined.”

He set three goals for year one: integrating the disciplines, improving the work, and diversifying the client portfolio. Alongside Jasmin and Giorgia Butler – who joined the agency as chief strategy officer in May 2024 – he said the team have already succeeded on all points. 

“I said when I started that we don’t have a chemistry, but an alchemy,” he added.

“We are the closest thing to an end-to-end creative agency as Australia has right now. Are we perfect? No. Are we improving every hour, day and week? Yes. We are seeing it through unprecedented effectiveness and growth for our clients.”

Driving Brendan is a perfectionist streak, and he joked he will “never be happy with the work – even when it is perfect, it could always be ‘perfecter.’” 

“What we are making however is big, real, culturally relevant work in the market.

“Bucking all trends, we are growing, we are hiring and we are investing. To be in this position is a luxury and we are not squandering this opportunity.”

The secret? Brendan said he, Jasmin, and Giorgia are “three incredibly different people, who respect each other’s strengths, augment each other’s weaknesses and really, really, really fucking love each other.

“It is rare to find a group of people at this level who get on so well, want to build an agency that has a heart and not just a soul. In the one building, we are blessed to have amazing people who all buy into the one vision and roll up their sleeves and just get shit done. It’s just crazy enough to work… and we think it is.”

Bringing Creative And Media Together

In October, Innocean went full-service, launching a media planning and buying capability within the agency, offering clients an end-to-end solution. The new media division kicked off with three foundation clients: Hyundai Australia, Geotab, and Sandhurst Fine Foods.

Since then, chief strategy officer Giorgia has made integration her agenda.

“Integration has to go so far beyond geography – it’s not about putting people near each other and hoping it all works out by osmosis,” she said.

“We’ve had to be mindful of how we mix together the chaos of creativity with the rigour and control of media investing.”

She compared the process of bringing media thinkers and creative thinkers together to “living in a 90s Mac vs PC ad,” adding people “need to be who they are and experience ‘other’ ways of thinking.

“We needed to look at the whole system differently and build new ways of working that alleviate pain points for clients, accelerate the team toward smarter solutions and create a culture of collaboration where everyone feels safe to contribute – even outside their remit.

“That means one strategy, brought to life holistically with a calibrated mix of chaos and control that all adds up to getting it right, eliminating wastage, and commanding an unfair share of attention.”

Building On An Offering

With a lot of growth achieved already, Jasmin said the Innocean team’s ambition is to “provide clients with a seamless, comprehensive service offering that covers the entire marketing and advertising journey – from initial brand strategy and creative concept development all the way through to media planning, buying, and execution.

“Our philosophy of ‘Fearless Creativity’ means that we are not here to deliver media solutions to media problems. We aim to truly deliver integrated solutions to marketing problems. 

“Merging world class creative thinking with world class media strategic thinking and execution requires a unique leadership set up. Which we now have and the results that we have driven for our clients this far are testament to that.”