Think HQ’s “Rare As Hen’s Teeth” Acquisition of LOUD to Form “The Agency UN”

Jen Sharpe and Lorraine Jokovic were first introduced by a mutual friend. It was only a matter of time before the two realised that they were meant to work together. Jen has ambitions of “taking over the world”. Lorraine “wholeheartedly agrees with her.” Last month, Jen’s Think HQ acquired Lorraine’s LOUD Communications.

“The first time that I met Lorraine, I knew she was going to be an amazing fit. Her business is an amazing fit, because we've got really strong values alignment.” Jen said. 

Think HQ has traditionally worked closely with government statutory bodies, but Jen had ambitions to grow. Lorraine - with her “great reputation and most importantly, great people” as Jen described - was exactly what Think HQ needed to continue its growth.  

The best part about the process of Think HQ acquiring LOUD Communications was “having a bunch of dinners” and “getting to know each other first,” according to Jen. 

“If we had stumbling points during the process, we’d pick up the phone and discuss and go ‘Yep, okay, that works,’” Lorraine said. 

Jen believes that perhaps this was a more “female approach” to an acquisition. This is the second acquisition for Think HQ. In both scenarios, Jen “got to know the human first and the business stuff came after that.”

“The scenario of a female owned business acquiring another female owned business is as rare as hen’s teeth, particularly in Australia,” Jen said.

Diversity and inclusion is something that both women are passionate about. Lorraine was previously chair of the Advertising Council’s diversity and inclusion board. Two of the key issues during her time as chair was the lack of women role models in leadership positions, and advertising not truly reflecting the Australia of today. 

“We’ve got a multicultural engagement arm and in-house language services team,” Jen said.

“I thought I was brilliant in talking about multicultural advertising and engagement, thinking that I was leading the market, but it turned out that Lorraine had been doing that for longer and that was an amazing moment.”

The Think HQ multicultural engagement arm, in-house language services, and First Nations team all serve the ambitions held by both women to channel the uniqueness of Australian culture. 

“There are more people who are first or second generation migrants in our population than those that are not. There is no mainstream anymore. I always say to Jen, ‘We are the only agency in this country that can generate a campaign for all Australians,’” Lorraine explained. 

Jen added, “We had our planning day when the LOUD team came down and a part of that was an internal comms exercise. We collected everybody’s stories of origin. As a business, 48% of us were born overseas, and 37 languages are spoken.”

Jen and Lorraine described Think HQ as "the agency UN,” with not only cultural diversity across the Sydney and Melbourne offices, but also diversity across age, sexuality, and socioeconomic backgrounds. According to Jen, they have proven time and time again that “a growing, profitable business can look and behave differently.”

Jen believes that the industry is missing the opportunity to actually see their audiences. She gave the example of a Punjabi film that ranked within the top five movies, and bought in half a million dollars within its first week. 

“There's a really important behaviour change piece in inclusion but there's also just the commercial opportunities that are just being missed,” she said. 

The pair touched on the chaos of trying to rebuild agency culture after the dreaded pandemic. While growth is wonderful, especially within the creativity industries, they need to focus on more than that, “to use our growth and our size to talk about and push this inclusive communication drive with our clients,” Jen said. 

Both agree that the bigger they get, the bigger social impact they can have. It’s important to Lorraine that there is a legacy that continues beyond the individuals. 

“LOUD Communications has been through a number of ownership iterations but the permanency of this acquisition and the fact that Jen and Think HQ has been very public about their purpose led positioning. Finding someone who shared those values and locking them into the business who will take it forward was really critical.”