Wonder

Research Outline

Prepared for Andrew S. | Delivered August 28, 2020

Content Marketing Agencies in Australia

Goals

Drive market understanding by providing information on the top content marketing agencies in Australia and their revenue size. 

Early Findings

According to the Content Marketing Institute, content marketing is a marketing approach that creates and distributes valuable and relevant information (content) that your audience is interested in or can solve an issue. It differs from traditional marketing in the fact that it is about a longer-term relationship built on conversation, while traditional advertising is more one-way. 
Although no separate category existed in 2019 for the Australian/New Zealand Agency of the Year awards, their Digital category would include content marketing skills. The gold winner for the Australian Digital Agency of the Year was VERSA, with Ogilvy Australia taking silver and CHE Proximity taking bronze. The other two agencies on the shortlist were Digitas Australia and Reprise Digital. 
Versa is privately held and an independent agency, meaning exact revenue figures are unavailable. However, it is an extremely strong performer with 46% year-on-year revenue growth. In 2018, they moved to a four-day workweek and have seen profits triple and revenue increase by 50%. 
CHE Proximity is owned by Clemenger Group and its earnings are not separated from the rest of the companies. The Clemenger Group made $568.5m in 2019. 
Other awards also recognize great content marketing agencies. In 2019, Edge was a finalist for several categories of the Content Marketing Awards, including Project of the Year, Best B2C Branded Content Campaign, and Best Content Marketing Program in Retail. It also won Best Use of Video in Content Marketing in the same competition. Edge's revenue is however not available, as it's privately held.
In 2019, the Content Agency/ Division of the Year at the AdNews Agency of the Year Awards was Daresay. Daresay is privately held and there is no available information on its revenue. However, its owner company RXP does declare its revenue, which was $141.1m. The company says digital services now account for around 80% of its revenue (112.88m) and that it is poised to focus even more on this category moving forward. 
Taking a different tack, the team also looked at the top agencies in Australia over the past decade as defined by Campaign Brief, which were also involved in content marketing. These were Clemenger BBDO (whose revenue is declared above), the Monkeys, DDB Sydney, BMF Sydney, The Brand Agency, Grey Melbourne, Leo Burnett Sydney, M&C Saatchi Sydney, J. Walter Thompson Sydney (which has a special social and content arm, Colloquial), Leo Burnett Melbourne, Cummins & Partners Melbourne, and Y&R Melbourne. The methodology to select these agencies included the number of times they had ads awarded for good work, as well as the top staff they had on their roster. 
According to our early research, "top" agencies can be defined either as agencies that have stood out for individual content marketing awards (which tend to be independent shops) or as top agencies in Australia overall that do content marketing as part of their offerings (which tend to be global names). Based on these, a list of top agencies have been listed above. Either way, revenue figures are often either unavailable for two reasons: the companies are privately held and therefore don't need to declare revenue, or revenue for the company is lumped into the broader holding companies' revenue results. These findings inform the recommendations for further research below. 