Bastion acquires New Zealand digital experience agency Catch Design

Bastion is accelerating its expansion in New Zealand by agreeing to acquire Catch Design, one of the country’s leading digital experience agencies. Catch will join Bastion this month to enhance its digital capability.

The acquisition aligns with Bastion’s strategic growth ambitions across New Zealand and Australia in the digital arena, bringing deeper expertise across customer experience, experience design, marketing technologies, CRM, web, app, and product development.

Founded in Wellington in 2005 by Hamish Stevenson (above right), Catch Design has grown from a digital experience design studio into a full-service digital agency. With a dedicated team of 25 strategists, designers, producers, and engineers, Catch has established itself as a leading force in the digital creative, creative technology and experience design space.

Stevenson says the partnership will provide them with new opportunities to leverage their digital expertise: “We’ve long held big ambitions to grow and broaden our services and have been looking for the right partner to help us achieve that. After meeting with the Bastion team and hearing their vision and philosophy for the future, we knew we’d found the right partners. We’re excited about the prospect of working with more of New Zealand’s leading businesses and brands to transform their digital experience.”

Bastion Shine CEO Toby Sellers (above left) says the acquisition of Catch Design will strengthen the agency’s digital offering and give it further ability to respond to a wider range of client challenges: “Catch has an excellent track record delivering market-leading digital solutions for some of New Zealand’s largest businesses. Our new partnership will ensure Bastion Shine can further unlock our clients’ digital ambitions to achieve greater growth and customer engagement.”

Catch’s portfolio has included well-known brands such as 2degrees, Mercury, One NZ, Burger King, NZ Olympic Committee, Now NZ, Consumer NZ, AA Smartfuel, Fonterra, and TSB.

The combined Catch Design and Bastion Shine Digital team will also be part of the wider Bastion ANZ team across digital customer and technology experience, and digital transformation, led by managing director, Tim den Braber.

Bastion ANZ CEO Cheuk Chiang says the new partnership is a significant milestone in their plans to become the leader in the digital space: “At Bastion, we believe in not only providing wide end-to-end capabilities for our clients, but also deep expertise. This means investment in highly experienced talent in key practice areas. Our digital services ecosystem is able to help clients leverage specialisations in digital advisory, data and analytics, tech automation and best-in-class activation to drive growth and realise customer and business value.

“The acquisition marks the latest move in our strategy to strengthen digital offering and integrate top-tier talent into an already exceptionally talented team.”