The agency group will now look to grow on the continent and increase its size through acquisitions and investments in the marketing industry. To navigate this transition, Mpange Chapeshamano has been appointed as managing director of AVATAR Johannesburg, while Natalie Andrews is now operations director.
Andrews, formerly with Ireland Davenport, will augment the management team. Co-founder Veli Ngubane will continue at the helm of Creative, and Mthunzi Plaatjie retains his position as managing director of AVATAR’s Cape Town office.
“This frees me to focus on growth in the AVATAR360 Group,” says Mkhwanazi. “We are looking to expand vertically into areas like B2B, Media, PR and Activation. My role is to look at whom we can partner with to extend our service offering and add even greater value to our clients and business,” he says.
In January, AVATAR and M&C Saatchi Abel announced a share swop deal that saw AVATAR Investment Holdings acquire minority shares in M&C Saatchi Abel, M&C Saatchi Africa, as well as three M&C Saatchi companies; digital agency Creative Spark, media agency M&C Saatchi Connect and the design-focused agency Dalmatian Advertising.
“What’s critical is that we still remain independent. Our mutual share acquisition is all about collaboration. We want to collaborate with more agencies and groups using our investment business AVATAR Investment Holdings where there is mutual value,” says Mkhwanazi.
“From the get-go, it has been our dream to find a meaningful way to help solve the issue of transformation in the advertising industry. The next phase will also see AVATAR Investment Holdings roll out a broad-based Women’s Empowerment Group called Esihlahleni. This will unlock growth for young black women to access the marketing and media industry, and will be a value-adding partner to our group and whomever we invest in. This means it will allow us to unlock interesting opportunities in the public sector, and will help us invest in agencies that will enable our growth into new markets and sectors.”
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