Flipside Group acquires Aqueduct to form a £12m+ full service digital agency

Working across strategy, creative, production and media, Flipside partners with some of the world’s most successful organisations, and biggest brands, to help them succeed in the digital economy.

Flipside Group, the full-service international digital agency headquartered in London has completed the acquisition of digital transformation consultancy Aqueduct as it ramps up its capability to help clients meet the challenges of the ‘COVID economy’.

Marcus Dyer, Flipside Group’s global MD, comments: “The dramatic market challenges brought to bear by the pandemic has crystallised the digital transformation imperative for clients in nearly every market – deeds rather than words now are what will separate the winners and survivors from the endangered.”

Dyer adds: “Aqueduct’s consulting expertise around getting digital transformation into action, its capabilities in UX, technical and project leadership, fits perfectly with our ‘impossible is nothing’ approach. Together we are rapidly mobilising our clients meet the challenges of surviving and thriving in our new world.”

Aqueduct helps clients to do better digital work by helping them establish production operations that have been proven to lead to successful digital ‘mentality’ and underpin more productivity and better results.  The merger with Flipside Group brings clients such as Suzuki GB, Tottenham Hotspur FC, front-line worker mortgage provider Kensington Mortgages and leading disability charity Scope to join clients such as GSK, Harley Davidson, Coca-Cola and Adobe in the Flipside Group portfolio.  All Aqueduct’s staff including consultants, creatives and developers have joined the enlarged Flipside business in London and Cranleigh.

Aqueduct was founded in 2002 by Rob Oubridge and went on to acquire technical development business Lemon Factory in 2008.  Previous long-term clients include Lloyd’s of London, Network Rail, British Red Cross, Manchester City FC, the RFU and English Heritage.

In September 2019 Aqueduct won a “BIMA” for its work with disability charity Scope – supporting Scope to deliver a digital transformation that saw one of the UK’s highest-profile charities undertake a dramatic pivot to champion equality for the disabled in the digital economy, with ground-breaking digital services and world-class inclusive design. More recently it has been working with Kensington Mortgages as digital efficacy is a key pillar in their brand transition to be the lender who supports the gig-economy – a mission brought even more pertinent with the surge in focus on front-line workers such as nurses.

Rob Oubridge says the approach of working more closely with clients to build internal practices that support more productive outcomes in digital delivery programmes has helped Aqueduct’s clients become the digital leaders in their respective sectors.  With the pandemic now driving many digital transformation agendas even harder and faster, the merger with Flipside Group builds capacity and multi-disciplined expertise that clients can lean on.

“It is clear that the digital day of reckoning is here and organisations that are effective at actually getting things done will have much better prospects than those that are stuck talking about digital transformation.  We’ve helped many clients become digitally more productive and very quickly you see momentum build, and quality grow across the organisation to the point where digital transformation delivers competitive advantage.”