Former Isobar Australia CEO Konrad Spilva has launched a new creative consultancy Shadowboxer to "shape" brands, business models and new ventures to be fit for the future.
Shadowboxer has been designed to bring together the best of agency and consultancy worlds for clients, combining brand, experience and technology transformation with business strategy in a small and senior team.
Shadowboxer launches with Spilva as managing partner alongside former Isobar colleagues Mike Fraser and Stephen Graham as creative and strategy partners respectively, with more foundational partners to be announced in the coming months.
“Brand experience is really the modern agency position but what’s missing from that is the capability to reimagine the business model, ways of working and culture to support it all," Spilva says.
"It seems crazy to me that clients trust agencies with brand but revert to consultancies for business strategy. We need to build business and brands together, from the same strategy.
“When it comes to agency versus consultancy we don’t care what we end up being called but what was important for us was that we set up a business that would only implement a solution when we either had skin in the game, or could be solution agnostic.
"For clients this simply means our work is never biased towards a bench of free talent that specializes in a particular technology."
Shadowboxer partner - creative and design Mike Fraser confirmed that despite a few clients "wishing it was", the Shadowboxer name isn’t a nod to Aussie 80s punk band The Angels.
“Whilst clearly a great song, the name comes from Shadowboxing - the sharpest form of training for those who want to consistently compete at the top of their game," Fraser says.
"We want to help our clients compete and build resilient businesses and brands - something that couldn’t be more important given the world and economy as it is right now during COVID-19."
Shadowboxer will consult clients across three core areas: business and brand strategy, creative and design, and technology and data.
The team is also proud to be independent and launches with a venture arm, something strategy director Stephen Graham says would be too hard to do at a holding group.
“We wanted to create a business that could actually put skin in the game with clients, cut all of the management layers that often slow work down and focus on selling value, not time-sheets," Graham says.
"That simply wouldn’t fly in a holding group where profits head to plush boardrooms on the other side of the world. We genuinely want to invest in Australian businesses and show clients we’re committed to real partnerships, not just here to respond to simple asset briefs.”
Shadowboxer has launched with five foundational clients including a joint venture to be announced imminently, and is expected to add more partners to the leadership team before the end of the year.
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