Good Rebels reborn: Why we are buying Muskae and Kanvas Media

When we re-launched Good Rebels (formerly known as Territorio creativo) in 2010 we were deeply skeptical about how the marketing world was interpreting the Internet. Display, affiliation, and search engine marketing was roughly all there was to online advertising and websites were mostly seen as shop windows. The UX discipline was taking off and smartphone apps were starting to bloom, but, like social media, it was seen as secondary and marketing directors were mostly concerned about how to migrate some offline budget to online channels following eyeballs.

A blatant lack of vision, since software (and social media ) was clearly eating the world in 2010. Back then, we adopted the “people first” mantra and focused on social media, a tsunami that took us further than expected. In 2015, we had already grown to one hundred Rebels in Spain and Latin America. And as social media and the tech giants monopolised the headlines, we knew our social-only days were coming to an end. Thus, we started to test “smart services”: niches surrounding our social core and overlapping with existing digital realms (like “Social CRM”). Sadly, it didn’t work. We needed a reboot.

Data, design, creativity and technology

So one year ago we decided to make a U-turn regarding our services strategy, stopping niche endeavours to create a full-fledged 360 digital agency and consultancy. Our clients increasingly needed us to help them create experiences that matter on all things digital, not just social.

Today, we are happy to announce that Good Rebels is acquiring two companies, Muskae and Kanvas Media, to strengthen our skills on UX, design, analytics, SEO and media buying.

Muskae is a 5 year old UX company, founded in Spain by an engineer, Kike Valdenebro and a designer, Javi Domingo with more than 15 years of experience. They have built a great reputation working with companies like American Express or Ferrovial, mostly being great at what they do. But even more important, they are great people that have built an amazing culture that will integrate smoothly with ours.

Kanvas was founded 10 years ago by Miguel Orense to become one of the data marketing consultancies of reference in Spain. He wrote a book about SEO and the company has worked with companies like Real Madrid or BBVA to optimise their SEM/SEO/ASO/CRO strategies. They’ll help Good Rebels navigate the ever-changing world of performance, media buying and web analytics.

Four areas of service at Good Rebels

Both Kanvas and Muskae were Rebels at heart who will become now full Good Rebels to help change the wrong headed world of marketing, helping us shape the restructuring of our services in four big pillars:

• Strategy and Research. Gaining detailed customer knowledge with digital techniques like online monitoring, surveys or co-creation communities to digitally transform the marketing function.

• Experience and Design. The customer journey at the centre of our strategies, to build great digital products and touch points thinking as designers.

• Engagement and Social. Creating long term relationships and turning clients into brand advocates through content, creativity and influence marketing.

• Performance and Media. Optimising ROMI through analytics and a deep knowledge of new channels (like Amazon) and formats.

Most of our projects will require a combination of these four areas. To ensure state of the art knowledge and capabilities and being able to deliver projects with multidisciplinar teams we’ve created a new area that will be led by Antonio Mas (Ideup founder) along with Pedro González, Mar Castaño, Kevin Sigliano, Miguel Orense, Mark Ralphs, Juan Fran Vaquero, Joel Calafell, Javi Domingo and Kike Valdenebro.

Customer centricity is the new marketing

Too many marketing directors still think media budgets first. CEOs leading the digital transformation agenda are not clearly grasping the shaking ground of digital marketing. The rise of customer experience is praised everywhere, but few companies have seriously reorganised their C-Level composition to face disruption from tech giants and startups.

No surprise the tech world has eaten the stock markets while the advertising industry pales.

Good Rebels sees even further than digital customer experience, as our HCO vision reveals. We see a world where customer-centric companies are also purpose led, not just profit led. But we need to focus on what we can help change now. And that’s moving from a marketing and media mindset to an experience and customer-centricity mindset. That’s why we are buying Kanvas and Muskae. To accelerate our skills that build upon our vision.

What’s next: our rebellion will triumph

We completed our first acquisition three years ago in Brighton, England. Does anybody know any truly global and relevant professional services player headquartered in Spain or Latin America? We wanted to anglosaxonise our company, combining latin magic and anglo logic to create an edge and compete in the global arena, where our ambition resides.

Last year, our UK business grew 50% to contribute a 15% (1 million pounds) of our total sales. Brexit won’t stop us, as clients will continue to buy digital services coming from London or New York. Since the Brexit referendum we’ve won projects in Belgium, Netherlands, Germany and Sweden, apart from England.

We are announcing today the addition of two new skilled teams, Kanvas and Muskae, to help us build the digital experience agency and consultancy the market is demanding.

Tomorrow, we’ll keep on inspiring organisations to become more human-centred, by adding talent to the pool. Growth is mandatory if we are to stay relevant in an industry that grows 15% each year. Blending organic and inorganic growth through new acquisitions that will strengthen our four pillars: data, design, creativity and technology and help us consolidate in Europe and America. This might require external capital and a laser focused integration execution.

If nobody said it was easy, let’s at least have some fun.

Fernando Polo