Bastion Collective has rebranded as Bastion. It has also created a new agency model because it says, openly and honestly, that “most agencies still cling to an antiquated model fundamentally broken by the digital age”.

“We started Bastion in 2009 with an objective to fundamentally disrupt a marketing and communications agency industry that is dominated by old-world, multinational holding groups,” stated Bastion founder and global chief executive officer, Jack Watts in the announcement email. “Every industry that has been disrupted by a digital age has had a new world player rise to prominence. Think Netflix, Uber, Afterpay and Amazon. This has happened in every industry except marketing and communications agencies.”

What do the changes entail? Bastion has unified its ten agencies under a single Bastion banner, it has launched a new Think Wide proposition and its agencies will now operate as one collaborative agency with specialist business units. The move, the agency says, creates one business with many services, deep expertise in each one, and wide thinking across the breadth of the communications spectrum. Most importantly, it creates a unified approach to how it works, rather than operating as a collection of disconnected individual agencies.

“After listening to the needs of clients for more than a decade, it is clear they want to deal with one agency that can fundamentally solve their business problems across the breadth of communications disciplines, but do so with independent expertise, care and agility. This is what our business has been built to deliver,” Watts stated.

Two in three Bastion clients are already working with more than one service within the business.

“Every major agency and professional services business is trying to move towards a more collaborative model, where different service offerings work together for the benefit of the client. I know this is what the big agencies say they do, but it is impossible to execute when you have competing internal agencies that don’t really get each other because they don’t work together and that are more incentivised to capture more of the client’s revenue for their own bottom-line than bringing in the best of breeds experts from across the group,” Watts added.

“This is what makes us different. We are not trying to retrofit an old-world agency and drag it into the new world. My brother and I created Bastion in and for the new world from scratch in our ‘20s. We only have complementary service offerings, and staff who grow by delivering integrated client work and learning from each other. We are able to leverage the scale of a multinational across our 250+ staff globally, with the care and agility of an independent.”

Some former Bastion Collective services have rebranded “to do what they say on the tin” and reflect each speciality better:

• Bastion Effect is now Bastion Amplify
• Bastion RM is now Bastion Reputation
• Bastion EBA is now Bastion Experience, and
• Bastion Banjo is now Bastion Creative.

They join Bastion Insights, Bastion Data, Bastion Performance, Bastion Interactive, Bastion Asia and Bastion Films.

Bastion has also implemented company-wide initiatives to etch wide thinking into its culture and provide career development opportunities for employees, including:

• Think Wide Academy, offering individual coaching and formal training in effective communication, business strategy, product sets and process.

• Think Wide Leap, enabling staff to develop careers and broaden skills by working in another part of the business, and

• Think Wide Giant Leap pilot employee exchange program with Bastion in the US.

“As Bastion team members increasingly work with colleagues across the business and build their own skills in thinking wide, they won’t just become better at their chosen communications discipline, they will become better integrated communications experts,” Watts explained. “Our objectives from here are to build the largest independent that ever existed in Australia and build the largest independent on the West Coast of America. We see that as an 18-month to three-year journey. The new world needs a new world agency, and that’s what we intend to create here at Bastion.”