Glen Meier, Boomtown CEO
According to the agency’s CEO, Glen Meier, its progress on so many levels in 2021 engendered additional confidence on all floors and in all teams, so much so that the teams are itching to tackle 2022 head-on.
“2021 for ‘the Boom’ was a year of milestones. For example, on the client front, we launched the new Stellenbosch University identity after two years collaborating with all staff, students and other stakeholders across all its departments,” he said.
You can view the Stellenbosch University work here, as well as other Boomtown 2021 campaigns: Stellenbosch University Brand Transformation, Boomtown Agency
“We also celebrated 50 years of South Africanness with our Nescafé Ricoffy campaign, and took a stand alongside a besieged community and National Glass against gun violence with the unveiling of our purposeful initiative, The Last Child statue.
“Looking inwards, we focused on building the strength and diversity of our teams from creative leadership to digital innovation, from video production to immersion, to growing our Joburg presence. And looking outwards, we ramped up our Bayeza graduate internship program to nurture more brilliant minds in 2021 than any other year. All this, and we are so ready for 2022!”
According Meier on the drawing board for 2022 are four key ambitions:
- Officially launching Boomtown Brand Design
- Strengthening the agency’s full service integrated creative offering
- Furthering digital innovation and integration
- Building the Joburg agency’s presence
“After our highly talented team led by brand design guru, Jesse Sharkie, and brand strategy genius, Stuart Innell, delivered the Stellenbosch University CI, we took a step back to evaluate the experience and skills they had acquired and honed during the process.
“We realised that the team had grown into one that could easily stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the best in the country, and decided to ‘give them wings’. As a result, we’re going to officially launching Boomtown Brand Design, an entity driven by Jesse and Stuart that will actively seek more design and corporate identity strategy work, during 2022,” said Meier.
“On the creative front, we’re happy with the progress we made last year under the guidance of creative consultant Ahmed Tilly, and exceptionally happy to have brought in creative heavy-weight Thule Ngcese to add punch to our full-service integrated offering and deliver even more robust end-to-end solutions for South Africa’s brands.
“From brand strategy to campaign strategy, above-the-line, below-the-line and through-the-line, from content production across every platform to digital innovation and integration, we are intent on making our clients’ brands famous, and are investing this talent and the time to ensure even better insight-based and purposeful and shareable creative this year. This, we know, will deliver growth, especially in our ramped up Johannesburg office.”
The shared value driving everyone at Boomtown to chase these goals is ‘optimism’.
“At Boomtown, we believe in better,” explained Meier. “This is our reason for doing what we do. And we do it – we strive for a better business, a better strategy, a better creative, better brands and better results – because we want to live in a South Africa where people have better lives, where we work in a better industry, where we contribute to a better economy, and where we help build a better South Africa. This is the optimism that is driving our charge in 2022.”
