Dentsu merges With Collective and Isobar
Dentsu Aegis Network’s With Collective and Isobar Australia have merged, seeing With Collective’s CEO and COO, Justin Hind and Dominique Hind respectively, exit the company.
Isobar CEO Erik Hallander will expand his remit to lead With Collective, which will rebrand to Isobar Australia as part of the deal.
With Collective’s Justin Hind and Dominique Hind
With Collective was founded in 2010 and acquired by DAN in 2016. It was formally linked to Isobar in 2017, to become part of the new ‘Isobar ANZ Group’ with Isobar, Accordant, Davanti, and SMG.
I feel very sorry for all the WiTH staff who have been left in the lurch for the last 6 months, weekly/monthly meetings cancelled & no business updates. Poor form from the owners despite the pay-out legal battles they were fighting.
So much for a family based values agency….
Good luck to those left.
You obviously have no idea about how a business works. Until everything is signed, everyone’s hands are tied on communicating anything. DAN has done this to multiple agencies recently. Ruined their reputations by ridiculous amounts of red tape. [Edited under Mumbrella’s comment moderation policy]
Justin & Dom built something great in WiTH.
It’s a positive sign that it was only 2 months over the magic 3 year mark since acquisition, as hopefully it means they will regain energy to build another great indie offering.
Isobar is now just a collection of failed, albeit once great, agencies.
perfect result for Dom and Justin…they get their money but escape early from Japanese rule
And that ladies and gentleman is the way to do it.
Everyone quoted talked about the great benefit to clients. Since when is ‘The P&L’ a client?
I’m getting a sense of failure from Dentsu generally.
the management culture just doesn’t translate particularly well into our market and values. It’s too ‘command and control’ for people and organisations to flourish and the result is burned out, dis-empowered and under motivated leaders and managers
Got nothing to do with translation. DAN is no better than wpp and Publicis in that respect. I’ve been in wpp for 5 years and it’s the same shit here as it is there. Command and control is the idea behind a network.
The real story is since the change in ownership WiTH has failed , both founders leaving , the name shuttered and the business closed. Will be interesting to compare a WiTH client list from 12 months ago to an Isobar one in 12 months time.
BOK BOK HENRY
and marks the end of WiTH… what there was left. the owners had tuned out long ago but hung on for the cash, cant say any of us blame them.
correct to say Isobar has been responsible for a string of failures globally. Glue London, FarFar Sweden were two notable ones.
locally with Visual Jazz, Soap Creative and now With gone, you have to wonder how Little Giant and Amicus are doing!
Sure if it’s the Manson Family. Dentsu have a back-ended 4 year earn out and pride themselves on the owners of any buisness they buy staying on and moving within the network. Sooo, I don’t think the champagne will be popping at Watsons Bay, but definitely at the Dentsu office.
Clearly you have no understanding of how multinationals treat the independent agencies they acquire. The DAN With joined is not the DAN in market now under HT. Of course, if I was him I’d want to get the man who turned my role down out of the business too.
Turned down his HT’s role? Sure you did mate, sure you did.
Crying Laughing emoji
So sad how the multinationals can ruin great local brands. With Collective were on fire, as were Match Media when Publicis bought them…
Anyone who’s worked at this agency knew how toxic it was – the best thing for that place now is to disappear into ambiguity and for all employees to take comfort in the fact they’ll be under new leadership soon and the name WiTH Collective will be no more.
Such a bad, bad place to work!
Working at this place messed with my mental health beyond measure. Glad to see it gone.
Surely whenever the words ‘isobar’ and ‘creative’ appear in the same sentence a Salaryman dies from laughter.