MORE THAN JUST A MERGER: VMLY&R’S NEW OFFERING

When the merger of VML and Y&R was revealed late last year, few in the industry would have been shocked or surprised by the move, least of all the staffers at the agencies, as both Bosilkovski and Hepburn confirm three months into VMLY&R.

Full-service digital agency VML originally sat underneath the Y&R family after being acquired by WPP in 2001 and first entered the Australian market in 2012 as a standalone agency.

Meanwhile in 2005, WPP acquired George Patterson, creating GPY&R locally, before dropping back to the Y&R name in 2017.

While the agencies have been on separate paths, Hepburn says the two teams found they could rely on each other’s skill set to meet changing client demands.

“The longer we developed VML and the more it grew, the more we realised we need to be doing that other part as well at Y&R,” Hepburn