News: Iris deal signals ‘new integrated agency model’

Independent marketing agency Iris has acquired a management consultancy – its first acquisition after nine years of international organic growth.

The purchase of Concise was described as “a move aimed at developing deeper business partnerships with clients” and “the introduction of a new integrated agency model, which addresses clients’ broader business issues beyond traditional marketing services”.

Concise works across a number of industries delivering strategic change for clients that include Costa Coffee, Intercontinental Hotels, AstraZeneca and Fitness First. Concise is considered a specialist in the leisure and gaming sector and works frequently with private equity firms looking to grow or acquire leisure and retail assets.

Iris said it was seeking to offer more breadth, depth and value by forging relationships further upstream in its clients’ business strategies. By placing greater emphasis on the fundamentals of business performance, the agency hopes to become an integral development partner and so deliver more relevant, more rewarding and more creative work.

“The integrated agency model of the future has to be about more than just communications to have a long-term effect on a client’s business”, said Ian Millner, Iris’s chief executive and founder. “Integration is about business partnership and we want to become inseparable from our key clients because of the difference we make, the value we add and our energising effect on their perspective and performance.

“Concise gets to the heart of clients’ business needs and our relationship with them allows us to develop a deeper understanding of where we can add value.”

Benjamin Chillcot, co-founder and joint managing director of Concise, added: “We are a dynamic and ambitious company that shares a similar culture and ethos to Iris. Our shared values and ambitions make us perfect partners to deliver services that meet the ever changing needs of our clients.”

The deal is part of ambitious growth plans for Iris which, as reported in Sales Promotion last year, secured multi-million-pound interest-free funding from the Royal Bank of Scotland’s Entrepreneur Challenge to kickstart a programme of acquisitions and aid further global expansion. Iris intends to continue to diversify by both discipline and geography and has signalled interest in a number of markets including Brazil, Hong Kong, Russia, Germany and South Africa.

The “micro network” currently has offices in the key hubs of North America, South America, Europe and Asia-Pacific which service a global client base that includes Sony Ericsson, Shell, Adidas and ING.

Iris has grown 50 per cent every year since it was started up in 1999 and has a turnover of over £42 million. Built on a co-operative model with a significant amount of the profits being shared among its 450 employees, Iris was started up in response to what the founders saw as “the mediocrity of the traditional big networks”.

Concise was co-founded in January 2002 by joint managing directors Benjamin Chilcott, James George and Josh Thomson, with the mission of being “the antidote to the big dominant players”.