"We help clients do the really hard things": How Spark transforms global marketing challenges

"We meet clients where they are, irrespective of how complex or antiquated that might be, and then we structure our solutions based on that," says Jonathan Shean, president and CEO of Spark, describing his agency's distinctive approach to global marketing challenges.

It's a refreshingly pragmatic philosophy in an industry often obsessed with imposing its own methodologies. But for Spark, an agency that specialises in helping brands navigate the complex terrain of global marketing adaptation, this client centric approach has become their defining characteristic.

From packaging roots to digital transformation

Spark's journey reflects the broader evolution of marketing itself. Originally part of a packaging business focused on music and DVD packaging, the agency began by providing globalisation services for physical products. But as the industry shifted, so did Spark.

"From a point in time when we were 100% print related and packaging related, today we're over 90% digitally based," Shean explains. "Still doing the same type of work though, which is helping clients with really complex global deliveries of their content."

This transformation wasn't merely about following industry trends, it represented a fundamental shift in how brands communicate globally. Where once the agency's reach was limited to manufacturing facilities, today they touch 220 different languages and dialects, delivering assets to 75 countries.

"The pace and complexity of the business has gone up," Shean notes. "What we do is help companies do the really hard things, take a great message and proliferate that in every different permutation for clients around the globe. That's the difficult, unglamorous side of marketing."

The complexity advantage

In an era where marketing agencies often claim to do everything, Spark has taken the opposite approach, focusing on specific capabilities and executing them exceptionally well.

"We're not all things to all people," Shean emphasises. "The things that we do, we do really well. It's experiential. It's large-scale localisation of global campaigns and adaptation. It's translation and the regulatory and cultural adaptations that go along with all of that."

This specialisation has allowed Spark to develop unique capabilities that larger, more generalised agencies often lack. Their in-house translation services, combining AI and human translators, provide a level of integration that clients increasingly value in complex global campaigns.

What truly sets them apart, however, is their approach to client relationships. "The feedback we constantly get from our clients is 'you guys act as an extension of us'," Shean says. "You understand us and you're operating like you're part of us."

This might sound like standard agency rhetoric, but Shean insists it's a genuine differentiator: "That seems subtle and small, but I can't tell you how consistently we hear that from our clients and how they point to it as a point of differentiation."

When complexity becomes opportunity

The projects that energise Spark most reveal much about their organisational DNA. "It's probably the ones that are really, really difficult," Shean admits. "When you hear about the client relationship, you hear about the need, and you're like, 'Oh my gosh, that's going to be a big, hard, heavy lift.'"

This appetite for complexity was tested earlier this year when the agency handled simultaneous global campaigns for Netflix's "Squid Game" and Universal's "Bad Guys 2", with unexpected additional territories added at the last minute.

"It was sort of like peak on peak on peak, and two of the three peaks were unexpected," Shean recalls. "The team really stepped up. We didn't just get it done, we knocked a home run." Their client satisfaction scores across 75 countries averaged 4.87 out of 5, testament to their ability to manage complexity at scale.

Beyond adaptation work, Spark's experiential capabilities have delivered equally impressive results. For a collaboration between Netflix's "Squid Game" and Microsoft, they created a video game contest where the ultimate winner received a six-foot mannequin of the show's iconic doll, with a custom made Xbox hidden inside the torso.

"We handled this from start to finish, concepting all the way through," Shean explains. "It was a huge success, just great creative the way through execution."

Data driven difficult conversations

No agency relationship is without challenges, and Spark's approach to navigating difficult client conversations reveals their pragmatic ethos.

"Being humble, being transparent, and being fact and data based," Shean lists as his guiding principles. "The objectivity of the data is really helpful when we're trying to have a conversation. Here's a difficult topic, but here are the facts and data that support it. What it does is make it less personal, less emotional, and a little easier to work through."

This data-driven approach extends to their technology stack, a nimble ecosystem of highly integrated SaaS tools with "micro apps" that drive efficiency while allowing them to adapt to clients' existing systems.

"We've built a very nimble technology stack that allows us to integrate into a variety of different tools," Shean explains. "When we think about the client, it allows us to be very nimble around how we interact with them, through what systems they want us to interact, what we're receiving, what we're returning."

The future: AI, evolving mediums and global messaging

Looking ahead, Shean identifies three key industry trends that will shape Spark's future.

First, the continued evolution of AI, which has already transformed operational efficiency but has yet to prove itself as a revenue generator. "I think that's still very theoretical," he observes. "People are looking at that and saying, 'How do I use AI to actually increase revenue generation?' That's still an open frontier."

Second, the transformation of legacy mediums through new technologies. "Think about good old classic direct mail," Shean offers as an example. "Very static in the way it was used. Then it became much more personalised... And now with QR codes, the ability to actually start having a digital interaction from a printed piece of paper is pointing towards the evolution of that medium."

Finally, the increasing sophistication of global messaging. "As technology increases, in part through the use of AI, it's going to allow companies to take their messages and tweak them ever so slightly based on different regions and populations to make them more effective," Shean predicts. "That's already underway, but I think exponentially it's going to continue."