EXCLUSIVE: After launching 10 years ago, independent media and creative shop Razor Group has sold a “significant” equity stake in the business to Graeme Wills with a radical overhaul of the company underway to “reset” with a new agency model and a new name – Joy.
Razor co-founders Simon Rush and Andrew Wynne remain key shareholders in the business but have reunited with their old chairman at Mojo when they launched Optimedia in Australia in 2007.
Wills, Rush and Wynne are spearheading a complete reinvention of the company’s offer, based on the premise that creative and media agencies have lost sight of how consumers are influenced and make purchasing decisions.
The new group will operate as The Joy Agency with a full-service offer – the creative division Us, will disappear and operate as Joy although Razor will remain for clients who want media strategy and buying.
Wills officially left his post as chairman of Publicis Mojo last year after selling his stake in the trans-Tasman operation along with Nicolas Davie back to Paris-based Publicis. The French group has since appointed former ninemsn CEO Joe Pollard as Australian CEO.
“The industry is a bit lost,” Wills told AdNews. “Digital agencies are coming at it one way, social is coming it from another and so-on. Very few people say let’s start again and build something based on how it is actually working today. “Clients are just bloody confused. There are just so many more questions than answers. Traditional agencies are just trying to hang on to stuff.”
Will said he had spent the past year “looking at the whole industry and talking to clients” trying to figure out what is the best way for clients to get value out of a “thing called an agency”.
“We’ve gone right back to the basics, looking at how consumers make decisions, how they buy, how they go about making purchasing decisions,” he said. “The industry’s greatest problem is it actually isn’t an expert anymore.”
Wills said consumer “reference points” are different today and agency models needed to be turned on their head.
He cited buying a bike as an example of the approach which Joy would take in developing outcomes that were of “real commercial benefit” to clients.
“If you’re buying a bike your reference point is the biking community. Your influence will come from the community in which that passion belongs. If a brand isn’t relevant or isn’t into that community it hasn’t got a hope in hell. It’s a very different way of operating.”
Razor co-founder Simon Rush said the decision to sell to Wills was because “he was a great thinker. We’ve worked with him on and off for 25 years.”
A slew of new executives have already started with refitted Joy. They include former worldwide planning director on Unilever for Lowe + Partners in London, Michele O’Neill. She returned to Australia last year and joined design group Hulsbosch. Graham Ritchie joins as strategic partner – some of his work included Coke’s Burn work across Europe.
On the creative side executive creative director at US, Christy Peacock, becomes creative leader for the Joy Group. Peacock previously worked with Wills at Mojo before moving to Fallon in the US and returning to Australia two years ago.
Wills goes in as Joy chairman across Australia and New Zealand. “What you need as a client is how consumers buy and on what basis do they make decisions and where do they get their influences from on the road to making those decisions,” he said.
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