Performance marketing agency RAPP opens in Australia

To meet growing demand for data-driven performance marketing services, RAPP, an Omnicom Precision Marketing Group agency has opened in Australia.

RAPP Australia Managing Director Paul Blockey and DDB Group Sydney CEO Sheryl Marjoram

Omnicom Precision Marketing Group (OPMG) has expanded its presence in Australia to meet rising demand for data-driven performance marketing services, embedding RAPP, an OPMG agency within DDB Group, a creative advertising firm.

RAPP is one of a number of agencies within OPMG’s stable and OPMG is the fastest growing part of Omnicom Holding Co.

According to Omnicom’s latest financial disclosures, OPMG is a $14.3bn revenue business, and in 2022, saw organic growth of 17.1 per cent, outpacing advertising and media, which grew by 7.3 per cent.

Newly appointed managing director of RAPP Australia, Paul Blockey, told The Growth Agenda: “Increasingly, clients want to access more data around their consumers and understand how to account for their marketing activity today to be able to prove their return on investment.”

Dr Blockey, who also holds a doctorate in psychology, ran strategy and design for RAPP in the US for eight years before returning to Australia.

“We are helping clients to see the individuals that they need to target, and not think about their audience just as a mass,” Dr Blockey said.

“It’s really understanding human beings and finding what makes them tick, and how to then leverage data and technology to create experiences that are going to connect with them and ultimately add value to the brand.”

Dr Blockey said RAPP works to “stand up for the individual”.

“I feel that perhaps is missing from the precision marketing space, that humanity and desire to really champion the needs of the consumer for clients. And to think through what that level of consumer-centricity means for businesses and how they organise themselves and tech around it,” he said.

Chief executive of DDB Group Sydney, Sheryl Marjoram, said the combination of DDB Group’s creative, strategy, public relations and experience-led services and RAPP’s performance-driven marketing demonstrates “the long and short of it” in action, referencing a report by godfathers of marketing effectiveness, Peter Field and Les Binet.

Their research found that an over-emphasis on achieving short-term results can undermine long-term brand performance – and vice versa.

In other words, “You need both. It is not about one or the other. It’s not a choice between brand or sales activation,” Ms Marjoram said.

“What we’re hoping will come to the fore is this idea of being able to balance the investment.

“On the branding side, that’s about emotional priming, for the broadest reach over a longer period of time. Then, as you get tighter down, it’s about persuasive messaging with a tighter target for a shorter time frame, and trying to do both differently, together in a connected way,” she said.

Both DDB Group and OPMG, including RAPP, are part of Omnicom Holding Co.