South Island full-service agency Plato rebrands to reflect growth and new direction

Plato Creative, the South Island’s largest full-service agency, has rebranded to simply be called ‘Plato’. The rebrand comes after two years of significant growth which has seen a doubling of both turnover and staff numbers and an expanded offering within the agency.

Co-founder John Plato says that the time is right for a name change that more accurately reflects the breadth of services that Plato now offer to large range of South Island, and national and international clients: “When Lisa [co-founder, Lisa Plato] and I started Plato Creative we had a focus on branding and design where we worked closely with our clients to really understand what made their businesses tick, and what set them apart from their competitors. This approach also built trust and that meant that we developed fantastic working relationships with our clients. So as our clients grew, we grew with them, as we were tasked with more broader briefs and more complex business challenges.

“This also sharpened our focus to grow our specialist capabilities and we now have extensive strategy and planning, creative, marketing and communications, and digital capabilities that were built to work seamlessly with our brand and design philosophy and deliver fantastic integrated work for our clients.”

Plato’s structure has always been centred around the client and supported by a full-service in-house offering; this offers the ability to tap in specialists as needed to influence the bigger picture or to ‘right size’ for clients accordingly.

John Plato says that’s the critical difference: “We can nail the specialist piece because we’ve got really skilled, senior people within each department. But growth takes integration and partnership with someone who’s focused on and can address commercial objectives from every angle. That’s the type of relationship we work towards earning with clients.

“Our industry has typically followed a model of ‘answer a brief, get a budget, do a project, do it well and you might get to repeat the cycle’. But if you build a partnership that are aligned with a business’s commercial objectives, you’ll have long term clients, which is what we have done.”

These evolutions are purposeful, and CEO Nick Harvey (pictured above) is clear this is not brand for brand’s sake but a strategic step towards answering market demands as the world continues to witness rapid shifts in technology, communication, and consumer behaviour.

Says Harvey: “The requests from clients are quite different now to what we’ve seen before. There’s different opportunities and different conversations being had at different levels of business. Our business and brand evolution is deliberately geared to serve these commercial needs.”

It is not a departure from the values that have defined Plato, but rather a reinforcement of its enduring dedication to commercially creative thinking, innovation and client relationships.

Says Harvey: “One of the most important things a business can invest in is its brand. So that’s what we’re doing. We’ve invested hugely in our structure and collective expertise, now the new brand and marketing strategy will drill into the real commercial value in that for businesses.”

‘Start-up’ energy still runs through the veins of Plato even 16 years down the track. Harvey says that’s evident in the new brand identity: “This business has never stood still. We’ve always been about growth and progress and partnership; the new brand perfectly encapsulates that attitude. The upward inflection of the wordmark is aspirational, it’s climbing, growing – that’s Plato to a T.”

Harvey believes that when you get people, product and partnership right, profit and growth follow. So the story of accelerating growth also applies internally for Plato’s staff as well too. With scale and a clear direction forward comes opportunity.

Adds Harvey: “We have so many new people in the business, this new brand represents them and their journey of growth within Plato.”

For more information please contact CEO Nick Harvey on 021 082 04544. Visit the website.