It’s Colenso – but not quite as you’ve known it. It’s an ad agency – but not as you’ve known those either. Colenso has decided to put itself ahead of the game (or as you know them, challenges) by doing what the industry considers to be inevitable – evolving.

Managing director, Scott Coldham, stated, “These challenges clearly demand we re-assess how we remain relevant and we’ve pursued the things we believe will help ensure creativity continues to flourish. We’re conscious of three key areas: how we collaborate to solve problems, how we evolve towards being an agency that represents not just our clients’ brands, but their customers too, and how we disrupt old processes.”

Collaborations: Colenso&Co

One of the agency’s new initiatives calls on key partners to have a physical and a virtual seat in the agency to help make the collaboration that all agencies talk about real – especially when client problems or opportunities arrive in the agency.

“Ultimately, we want to provide agnostic solutions to our clients’ problems,” explained creative chairman, Nick Worthington.

“Often the solution isn’t advertising. Colenso&Co is a partnership structure with a group of specialist companies – Facebook, Google, Perceptive, Scion and Soul Machines to name a few, to ensure we are seamlessly exposing our clients to the best thinking. When casting, we can call on these partners to build truly cross-functional teams to solve for the outcome.

“Partnering with these companies isn’t necessarily a new thing for our industry – formalising a process that benefits from their collective thinking power is. It enables us to get better, without necessarily getting bigger.”

The link between clients and customers: ColensoCX

In 2016, Proximity and Touchcast merged into Colenso BBDO, enhancing the agency’s direct, digital and data offering. Then the Clemenger Group acquired Perceptive, a customer intelligence agency, in June 2017. The agency will also welcome a new member to its senior management team from Accenture Singapore mid-year. Each acquisition has grown the CX, business transformation and growth expertise that’s since become engrained in the Colenso culture.

Coldham stated, “How companies re-organise themselves to outpace change and stay ahead of the consumer is increasingly putting pressure on the shape of our creative product. We will continue to enhance our capabilities to keep pace with change and simplify clients’ business problems, extending our creative thinking beyond traditional communication-led briefs.”

New ways of working

How an agency integrates with the increasingly diverse operating models and expectations of organisations requires different team structures, different skillsets and different approaches. Colenso is adapting in several ways to make more ideas happen, more often.

Non-ad campaigns: Colenso Ventures

The appointment of Gavin Becker from consultancy, Made by Many, in NYC has paved the way for an innovation offering. It’s designed to help clients develop new products, new services and new business ventures to help them move into the white space so often monopolised by start-ups.

It’s a completely new way of working, short and sharp, enabling live prototyping of ideas and consumer engagement with them and giving organisations new confidence to pursue initiatives. Colenso Ventures is already gaining real traction – especially with brands that are experiencing strong new market entrants or require different routes to market for their products, services and experiences.

In-house making: Colenso Studios

Colenso Studios is the collection of Colenso’s traditional studio function, creative technology, social, production, experiential and its in-house content business, Flare.

It is by chief operations officer, Paul Courtney, and his creative group heads and enables clients to access the ‘doing’ capability of Colenso with ease when speed, accuracy and quality are paramount. Studios uses streamlined processes to deliver on time and on budget, while living up to Colenso’s standards.

Colenso Studios is a cost-effective way for clients to produce work with existing frameworks or brand platforms, global material to adapt, or simple local content and delivery requirements in any channel.

In a nutshell:

“Everything has changed, and nothing has changed,” stated Coldham.

“While we’ll never walk away from the brilliantly beautiful power that creativity can have to affect change, how we get to it and deliver it requires an appreciation of the significant changes that are happening in our industry, and our clients’. We’re confident these gestures will help forge another successful chapter for our creative company.