Aegis acquires Australian agency Apollo Group

Apollo's services cover all areas of promotional marketing, including consumer promotions, promotional printing onto game cards and packaging, experiential marketing and promotional insurance programmes. Its clients include Coca-Cola, Foster's, New Zealand Telecom and Nestle.

The agency has also developed the Apollo Marketing System, which enables the collection, manipulation and outputting of promotional data such as unique codes, prize messages and predictive sports games.

Apollo will not be rebranded and the current management team, comprising general managers Ruth Money in New Zealand and Will Riley in Australia, will remain in place.

Aegis is planning to expand the company's retail expertise in 2008.

Patrick Stahle, CEO of Aegis Media Asia Pacific, said: "We're looking to make similar buys next year, but retail is a tough sector to move into as most companies are too niche to make sense as acquisitions.

"Buying Apollo will help our clients get closer to where consumers make purchasing decisions."

Robert Lerwill, CEO of Aegis Group, said: "Promotional marketing is an important tool in the advertising mix. Apollo has vast experience in this area, great management and a blue-chip client base.

"With this acquisition we will be rolling out new skills and software throughout the Aegis Media network."

Apollo was established in New Zealand in 1995 and opened an office in Sydney in 1999.

This article was first published on brandrepublic.com