Clemenger Group’s merger of shopper marketing agencies Raydar and Clemenger Shop was accomplished without redundancies. The merger comes two years after the Shop division was launched, and will see the staff of six leave the Colenso office on College Hill and join the 25 employees at Raydar in Grafton.
Clemenger Group ceo Jim Moser told M+AD that Clemenger Shop has been working closely with Colenso.
“They are now working across five or six of Colenso clients and they’ve just been chipping away at business,” Moser said. “They’ve worked those clients very well and really provided a through-the-line service to many of them, covering everything from shopper marketing through to consumer advertising.”
Moser says Clemenger Shop turned a profit in a “very short space of time”.
“A start-up generally takes three or four years before you start making any money, but these guys have breaking even or making a small profit since they started,” he said. “They’ve grown to the stage where they can easily afford to employ the staff they have and then contract out the rest of the work to Raydar or Colenso and still make money.”
Moser says the group always planned to eventually separate Clemenger Shop and Colenso.
“I always had in the back of my mind that depending on how big they got and how developed they got that we would them out of Colenso and set them up either separately or merge them with another Clemenger Group company,” he said.
Raydar was the obvious choice for the merger, because its shopper marketing services complement those offered by Clemenger Shop.
“Clemenger Shop is focused on customer insights and the research side whereas Raydar is very much into the creative and execution,” Moser told M+AD. “And so when we were looking at these two businesses, we thought why don’t we merge them now, instead of waiting a few more years for Clemenger Shop?”
Raydar founder Darryl McClay will lead the merged agencies as ceo while Clemenger Shop general manager Troy Fuller becomes managing director.
Both agencies will continue as separate entities in the immediate future, while a new combined entity and office shift are explored.
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