Havas snaps up Kaimera in down under power play

SYDNEY: Havas is taking no prisoners in Australia and New Zealand. The Parisian advertising leviathan announced yesterday it has gobbled up Kaimera, a 50-strong independent media agency that has made its name untangling the Gordian knot of modern marketing. The deal marks Havas’s latest salvo in a deliberate campaign to dominate the antipodes—and it is not mincing words about it.

Founded in 2016, Kaimera has punched well above its weight, nabbing clients like Nando’s, Afterpay and BritBox whilst building outposts in Sydney, Melbourne and Auckland. Now it will operate as “Kaimera, a Havas Company”—a branding choice that suggests the parent firm is keen to preserve the scrappy entrepreneurial spirit that made the acquisition appetising in the first place.

The marriage makes strategic sense. Havas gets instant scale and specialist nous in a market it is desperate to crack. Kaimera gets the deep pockets and technological firepower of a global network that employs 23,000 people across 100 markets. The agency’s founders, Nick Behr and Trent McMillan, will report to James Wright, group chief executive of Havas ANZ, whilst staying put in their current digs in Surry Hills and South Melbourne—at least initially.

The real prize, though, is Converged.AI, Havas’s grandly named data-and-algorithms strategy that promises to fuse creativity, media and technology into one almighty offering. Kaimera’s integration is meant to accelerate the rollout of this operating system, giving clients “real-time, optimised, and personalised marketing solutions at scale.” Whether that is marketing waffle or genuine transformation remains to be seen.

The acquisition swells Havas ANZ’s headcount past 450 and comes hot on the heels of the network’s new “deliberately different” positioning—a cheeky pitch that it combines indie agility with big-network muscle. Havas’s chairman and chief executive Yannick Bolloré, called the deal proof of the group’s “very clear ambitions” in the region.

Behr, for his part, struck an optimistic tone. “We need to stay future-focused for our clients and our people, and Havas is the perfect partner for this next chapter,” he said. Translation: we have taken the money and are betting the corporate machinery will not crush what made us special.

If Havas can pull this off without smothering Kaimera’s maverick culture, it will have pulled off a rare trick in the graveyard of independent agencies swallowed by holding companies. If not, well, at least the founders will have a nice exit