Creative team Rod Vallis and Peter Jacobsen launch ‘The Australian agency in India’ – GooRoo
Experienced Australian creatives Rod Vallis and Peter Jacobsen today launched GooRoo Advertising to offer marketers the wealth of their creative experience and cut price production.
Billed as the Australian agency in India, GooRoo is an idea-driven creative agency with a digital, print and video production studio in Bangalore, India. GooRoo offers high quality creative assets at around 50 percent of the cost of other Australian agencies.
GooRoo creative partner, Rod Vallis, said that having spent many years working in India and around the world, the pair had seen offshoring in the advertising industry grow year-on-year with mixed results.
Says Vallis: “We’ve been there from the beginning and have seen the challenges agencies have faced in building an offshore operation that produces quality work and is viable. Over the years we’ve learnt a lot helping big international brands grow their business and save money through offshoring. We decided it was time to help Australian brands do the same.
“One of the biggest issues we’re seeing is a lack of transparency. We’re hearing that some agencies are sending production offshore without necessarily informing their clients. We’re upfront about it as we see it as one of our main competitive advantages.”
Vallis and Jacobsen have been a creative director team for close to 20 years on a host of big brands including IBM, American Express, Qantas, Lenovo and Telstra. The team also has deep experience in India, having collaborated with Indian agencies since 2002 when they were Asia Pacific regional creative directors for IBM at Ogilvy.
In 2007, Vallis moved to Bangalore as the founding worldwide creative director for Lenovo, at Ogilvy Worldwide, helping to set up the world’s first global brand agency headquartered in India.
Says Vallis: “It started out as an experiment with around 30 people, but we soon had more than 150 people with over 50 in the creative department alone, delivering multi-channel campaigns around the globe for Lenovo and IBM.”
GooRoo is targeting marketers who have a high-volume turnover of creative assets and are keen to save on creative production costs, with the comfort of knowing that the work is undertaken under the guidance of Australian creative directors with big brand experience.
Says Vallis: “Our point of difference is that we offer an extremely cost-effective rollout of your campaign assets. And sure, most agencies are now offshoring to cut costs, but we don’t have offshore partners, we have our own studio so we can ensure a better outcome than the agency networks.
“If you turn over high volumes of creative assets and think offshoring your creative production could help you make dramatic savings but are concerned about maintaining quality and control, GooRoo was founded for you.”
Gooroo has launched in Sydney, Brisbane and Bangalore, with the Indian operation headed up by creative partner Gautam Dev. Gautam first began working with Vallis and Jacobsen back in 2004 when he was the creative director for IBM India at Ogilvy in Bangalore.