SMART (advertising agency)
Smart Advertising Agency
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| Subsidiary | |
| Industry |
Advertising agency Marketing Branding |
| Founded | Sydney, Australia (2000) |
| Founder | Ben Lilley and Paul Findlay |
| Headquarters | Melbourne, Australia |
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Number of locations
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3 |
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Key people
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Ben Lilley, CEO of McCann Worldgroup Benjamin Davis Executive Creative Director |
| Services | Brand Advertising, Communication Strategy, Social Media and Digital Services |
| Website | www.smart.com.au |
SMART is a full-service Australian advertising agency with offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Gold Coast and Brisbane. SMART is an independently managed business within McCann WorldGroup, part of the Interpublic Group of Companies.
Launched in 2000 as a boutique creative agency, SMART was established by a group of ex-multinational agency professionals seeking to create "a strategic and creative alternative to traditional agency thinking". The company's business model has been described as a "borderless" approach, bringing together specialists from various locations and disciplines to service its clients' needs.
The firm was originally positioned as a specialist in youth advertising, partly due to the age of its founding partners who were each under thirty when they set up the agency. Marketing magazine B&T named SMART "the New Age ad agency" in its Agency of the Year awards in 2003. It has since been more broadly noted as part of a new breed of agencies who are "breaking away from traditional advertising models".
The media interest in SMART's "non-traditional" model is typical of a broader industry trend being observed in most developed advertising markets, with independent agencies like TAXI and StrawberryFrog experiencing similar recognition for their unconventional business models.
In 2011, McCann Worldgroup, the world’s largest marketing services company and advertising agency group, acquired SMART and replaced the management of McCann Worldgroup Australia with the management team from SMART. SMART has since continued as an independent advertising agency with an integrated creative and media offering under a dedicated management team.
SMART's creative work has been recognized at advertising award shows including the Cannes Lions International Advertising Festival, One Show, Clio Awards, New York Festivals and local Australian advertising shows. The business was named B&T Agency of the Year in 2003 and was subsequently recognised in the AdNews Agency of the Year Awards in 2004 and 2005, and both the AdNews and B&T Agency of the Year Awards in 2006. SMART has also featured in the Business Review Weekly Fast100 list of Australia's fastest growing businesses.
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Wikipedia