Mongoose And Speed Sport To Merge
Speed Communications’ sports division and its sister sponsorship agency Mongoose are to join forces from January 2017 to form an enlarged sports and entertainment business under the Mongoose brand.
The merger of the two businesses to create an enlarged specialist agency has been accelerated by the decision of Kate Bosomworth, managing partner of Speed Sport, to leave to explore new opportunities. Bosomworth will leave her role at the end of the year, but will continue as a consultant to the board into 2017.
The new agency will operate under the Mongoose brand and is set to go live as of 1st January 2017. The new business will be led by Chris O’Donoghue, currently CEO of Mongoose, with the current senior teams across both businesses forming one senior management team under his leadership. Speed Sport’s 15 staff will join the existing 15 employees of Mongoose, and a further seven back office staff currently shared by the two agencies, in the new agency.
Commenting on the forthcoming merger of the two specialists, O’Donoghue said: “Combining Speed Sport and Mongoose is a hugely exciting step for us all and one that makes perfect sense given our specialist skills, our increasingly close working relationship and our recent acquisition of Generate Sponsorship, which was the UK’s leading independent PR and sponsorship agency. We are all looking forward to growing and developing our expertise together as a truly integrated sports and entertainment marketing agency.
“Kate has been an inspirational figurehead for Speed and every one of us wishes her well for an exciting new future in sport.”
Bosomworth, who is also a member of the Sport England board, said: “The last 15 years have been an extraordinarily exciting and successful journey. I’ve had the privilege of working with an amazing group of Clients during this time and an extremely talented team of people. There are some very exciting things happening in sport right now I am keen to explore new horizons and take on a new challenge and wish Chris and the team all the very best for the next phase in what I am certain will be a very bright future for all.”
Speed Communications will remain under the leadership of CEO Roberta Fuke and continue to focus on business, corporate and consumer areas, working closely with the Mongoose team to provide clients with access to sports expertise.
Fuke added: “At mission Group we operate a ‘one family’ mentality, and are constantly focused on providing what’s best for Clients. It makes sense to combine mission’s specialist sports talents under one brand, leaving Speed Communications to focus on driving its core B2B and B2C business.”
Both Speed and Mongoose are owned by The Mission Marketing Group, which also owns the PR firm Bray Leino, as well as agencies April Six, bigdog and Story.
Clients of Speed Sport include The North Face, Lucozade, Müller and Bosch, while Mongoose also works with Müller, as well as Green King and Cirque du Soleil.
Mongoose has offices in Singapore and Cork in the Republic of Ireland, in addition to its London HQ, and in April acquired Generate Sponsorship.
