Bang Acquired By NEXTGEN

Bang Australia

NEXTGEN Group CEO, John Walters, with Bang's Managing Director, Martin Mason. 
NEXTGEN Group CEO, John Walters, with Bang's Managing Director, Martin Mason. 

Fast growing IT aggregator and facilitator NEXTGEN has acquired Bang Australia, specialists in IT marketing and branding. The move integrates cutting-edge digital marketing skills into NEXTGEN’s portfolio, bolstering the group’s capacity to assist IT vendors and partners to more effectively and sustainably build their businesses.

John Walters, Group CEO of NEXTGEN, said: “NEXTGEN has always been about helping its channel partners and vendors stay relevant and remain ahead in a fast changing IT environment. Bang is a serious and well-respected strategic marketing player, and this partnership is the next stage in that journey, adding scope and depth to our current digital marketing service, NEXTGEN Create. This allows us to bring yet further value to both our vendor and channel partners at a time when their ability to connect with customers digitally is more important than ever. We warmly welcome Martin Mason and the highly talented Bang Team to NEXTGEN.”

The acquisition takes place after an auspicious year for NEXTGEN in which it grew revenue by more than 40% and won the ARN ICT Industry Award for Specialist Distributor of the Year and Oracle’s Cloud Distributor of the Year for Asia Pacific. Bang are experts in IT marketing, having successfully delivered marketing and branding services to the IT channel ecosystem as well as for Fortune 500 clients such as Cisco, Microsoft, Fujitsu and IBM. For more than 16 years Bang has been working with companies around Australia and internationally.

Martin Mason, founder and Managing Director of Bang, said: “We have been working with NEXTGEN for more than three years as we saw there was an opportunity to further develop our vision of delivering digital lifecycle marketing programs to partners. Becoming an integrated part of the group enables us to provide a more sophisticated set of solutions that embrace marketing through to sales.”

Scott Caulfield, NEXTGEN’s General Manager of Digital and Marketing Services, said: “For our clients, both vendors and partners, this is an exciting new phase in the group’s direction. The acquisition will enable NEXTGEN to join the dots from marketing to sales performance, becoming a central point of information for both vendors and partners. These insights and data analytics will also enable more reliable predictive modelling around trends in the IT ecosystem.”

The acquisition is particularly timely given the need for IT channel partners to bolster their digital marketing skills and online presence. This has become more urgent with the growth of cloud-based Software-as-a-Service as a portion of partners’ revenue which demands a better demonstration of the ongoing business value of SaaS and IT vendor services through more sophisticated marketing.

The decision also fits within the broader trend of consultancies such as Accenture and PriceWaterhouseCoopers integrating creative marketing and branding services into their broader portfolio of offerings to clients.

Speaking of Bang’s approach to marketing within the IT channel, Mason added: “Our core belief is that successful marketing, including for IT products and services, comes down to creating an emotional connection with the customer and targeting them with the right messaging at the right time. In some cases highly technical products and services that are being delivered but at the end of the day those making the decision to purchase them are still people. So this is what we always try to emphasise, and what has allowed us to really deliver growth for our clients.”

Bang’s portfolio of services include brand strategy and planning, brand identity and development, creative digital campaigns, web design and development, mobile-responsive UX, and digital content strategy and creation. NEXTGEN offers technology solutions and services to its channel partners across areas including enterprise software, datacentre, migration to the cloud consultancy and finance.

ABOUT BANG AUSTRALIA

Launched in 2001, Bang has grown into a powerhouse of creativity and strategy. We take a multi-disciplined approach to strategic communication, bringing a formidable digital skillset and adventurous thinking to our clients’ challenges. We work with partners in the IT channel and beyond to elevate their digital profile and value among their current and potential customers, in a world in which the digital landscape gets a little more exciting, and a little more crowded, every day.

ABOUT NEXTGEN

NEXTGEN is a pioneering specialist aggregator and facilitator that brings innovative data centre technology, cloud solutions and services to market. With the next generation of IT service delivery, we help channel partners push the boundaries of what’s possible. Our unique combination of specialist knowledge, innovative technology platforms and services enables our partners and vendors to stay relevant and remain ahead in this fast changing IT environment.

Fast growing IT aggregator and facilitator NEXTGEN has acquired Bang Australia, specialists in IT marketing and branding. 


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