Hermaneutics – Herman Manson

Lowe + Partners now MullenLowe South Africa

by Herman Manson (@marklives) Lowe + Partners South Africa has rebranded itself as MullenLowe South Africa as part of a worldwide rebranding effort by the agency network. Interpublic Group last year merged Lowe and Partners with Mullen, bringing together a significant US agency with a strong European network.

Streamlined

MullenLowe South Africa MD, Katinka Pretorius, says the South African agency has been restructured into streamlined single agency with a single leadership team. The focus thus shifts from Cape Town and Johannesburg agencies to a single SA-focused agency. MullenLowe is being positioned as a creative boutique agency with a global footprint. In SA, it employs 50 people, and key clients include Unilever, GWK, Pioneer Foods, Nando’s, Prudential and Sun International.

The MullenLowe Group network will now consist of four main brands: MullenLowe, delivering integrated marketing communications solutions, MullenLowe Profero, the digital pure-play network, MullenLowe Mediahub, providing media planning and buying solutions, and MullenLowe Open offering behaviour-driven activation, CRM and shopper marketing.

“Challenger Octopus”

The new “Challenger Octopus” logo was developed out of MullenLowe Brazil. Jose Miguel Sokoloff, president of the MullenLowe Group Global Creative Council, explains, “The new ‘Challenger Octopus’ brand identity perfectly embodies the positioning of MullenLowe Group, as a creative company with a challenger attitude that is willing to take risks, and underscores a key competitive advantage of our network with our hyperbundled offering.”

Earlier in January 2016, the agency announced that its CEO, Julian Ribeiro, is leaving “to pursue new opportunities”. Ribeiro’s responsibilities has been assumed by the management team of Pretorius (MD), Kirk Gainsford (CCO), Sarah Dexter (MD, OIL) and Rod Wilson (COO), who will report to Jeremy Hine, MullenLowe Group EMEA president.

Herman Manson (@marklives) is the founder and editor of MarkLives.com. He was the inaugural Vodacom Social Media Journalist of the Year in 2011 and has, over his 20-year-plus career, contributed to numerous journals and websites in South Africa and abroad, including AdVantage magazine, Men’s Health, Computer World and African Communications.