Raydar and Alphabet Soup to Merge

Media Release
11 December 2009

Raydar and Alphabet Soup to Merge

The Clemenger Group has announced the merger of Raydar and Clemenger’s Alphabet Soup to take effect January 2010.

The merged entity will retain the Raydar name and will be led by Raydar Managing Director, Darryl McClay, who will have a minority shareholding in the company. The agency will be located at Alphabet Soup’s current Grafton premises.

Clemenger Group New Zealand CEO, Jim Moser says while both agencies are leaders in the small to mid-sized below-the-line/retail space, bringing them together will create a much stronger offer.

“We see a big opportunity in today’s changing marketing environment for a very strong mid-sized below-the-line/retail agency and believe the merged entity will provide a highly attractive offer. Both Raydar and Alphabet Soup have highly complementary skills that, when combined, will bring added resource and a strengthened capability to both sets of clients.”

The opportunity to merge the two companies and work on such a fantastic group of clients was irresistible for Darryl McClay.

“I’m looking forward to meeting the Alphabet Soup clients as soon as possible and to successfully bringing together two talented, focused and committed teams to help our clients in what is still a very tough sales environment.

“Our focus will be on offering clients a combination of strategically aligned creative with great value execution. With a combined 30 plus years experience in this area we will be in the right position to help our clients get the best value from their marketing spend.”

Established 15 years ago, Raydar has carved a strong reputation in the FMCG sector with a focus on leveraging brands in-store to deliver greater sales. Their expertise lies in their ability to produce creative that’s aligned to brand strategies while being adapted to the particular sales environment. Their growing expertise around sales promotion compliments their retail offer.

Alphabet Soup was launched almost 20 years ago and has developed into a very strong marketing communications agency with particular strength around collateral and below the line/retail communication, including POS. They have developed long lasting client relationships based on delivering a consistently high level of creative communication.

Joining Darryl on the management team will be Creative Director, Martin Sawbridge (from Raydar) and Operations Director, Aynsley Scott (from Alphabet Soup).

Major clients from Raydar will include Frucor Beverages (a Raydar client for 15 years), Kellogg’s, plus recent wins Fosters NZ and ABE’S Real Bagels. Alphabet Soup brings across Restaurant Brands New Zealand’s KFC & Pizza Hut brands (an Alphabet Soup client for more than 12 years), Heinz Wattie’s, Appliance Connexion (100% and Appliance Spot brands) and The Laminex Group.

ENDS

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