World Wide Creative co-founders, Fred Roed and Mike Perk made the announcement to clients and stake-holders. “The move underpins our commitment to creating remarkable products and campaigns in the digital space,” says Roed, World Wide Creative’s CEO and creative director.

Perk and Roed formed World Wide Creative in 2003. With clients such as Pinnacle Technology, City of Cape Town, The Foschini Group, Virgin Mobile and Hyundai, the agency is recognised for its expertise in web and mobile development, search and social campaigns and creative digital work. The agency is behind the renowned Heavy Chef monthly digital marketing events and Heavy Chef training courses.

“We now form a critical part of an exciting group of companies,” states Perk. “The partnership with Saratoga enables us to ramp up our service provision in the key areas of e-commerce, application development, search and digital media advertising.”

Saratoga, founded in 1998 and headed by Anthony Robinson and Mark Gebhardt, is a leading software and services company with clients such as Old Mutual, The Foschini Group, Maitland and Santam. In 2011, Saratoga also acquired Digital Matter, a specialist in mobile applications.

Saratoga is majority owned by the JSE-listed Sekunjalo Group, rated South Africa’s most empowered company by Empowerdex / Financial Mail in 2010. It has been a busy year for Sekunjalo, with a Sekunjalo Holdings led consortium recently acquiring Independent Newspapers from the Irish-owned Independent News & Media Group.

“For us, this move signifies a convergence of technology and marketing,” says Anthony Robinson, CEO of Saratoga. “We see a compelling synergy between Saratoga’s established technology services and World Wide Creative’s skill at designing and implementing world class digital work.”

For World Wide Creative and its team, the move signifies a shift away from the current industry trend. “The status quo is for digital agencies to be absorbed into the traditional agency space,” elaborates Roed. “The danger is that agencies disappear into a bigger corporate structure and lose their passion and identity. Saratoga not only enables World Wide Creative to retain our focus, but also allows us to scale up on exciting areas such as mobile, big development, media and search.”

World Wide Creative’s Johannesburg GM, Louis Janse van Rensburg confirmed the energy within the agency: “We are thrilled with the partnership. Saratoga’s success in delivering world-class technology is a great fit to our focus on creating platforms for e-commerce sites, mobile platforms and innovative digital solutions for digital campaigns. With this move we are now a significant ‘end-to-end’ marketing provider.”

Mike Perk adds: “Due to increasing demand, we provide team training to blue chip companies who require a deeper understanding of digital marketing.” Since 2008, World Wide Creative has been training clients such as Media24, MiX Telematics, New Media Publishing, Virgin Mobile, MUT, Woolworths Financial Services and The Publishing Partnership.

“Saratoga is essential to our plans to bolster the underlying platform for our Heavy Chef training and our monthly Heavy Chef marketing events.” Saratoga is also a sponsor of the well-known NetProphet annual conference.

Roed was recently appointed ‘Head of Agencies’ at the DMMA, South Africa’s digital industry body. “World Wide Creative will continue to focus on remarkable digital marketing campaigns and products. The partnership with Saratoga means we can further build our relationship with partner agencies in the industry, core clients and service providers. This is an exciting time for our team, for our clients and for the industry as a whole. We aim to make the most of it.”