Brand experience and innovation agency Akcelo has announced the acquisition of POPULA, adding specialist mobile-first expertise and senior leadership from inside Meta and Google as part of its next growth phase.
The move reflects the close alignment between the two agencies and enhances Akcelo’s capabilities across mobile, social and digital, while deepening the senior creative leadership.
Founded in 2020, Akcelo aims to blend creativity and design to craft brand experiences that solve business challenges and uncover new opportunities.
Jay Morgan and Mitchel O’Donohue, launched POPULA in 2023 to help brands build advertising for a mobile-first world.
Ex-Meta creative Jay Morgan from POPULA.
By joining Akcelo, POPULA’s expertise will now scale across Akcelo’s global network of offices in Sydney, Melbourne, Vancouver, London and LA, enabling stronger brand experiences for clients.
Akcelo CEO Aden Hepburn said, “Akcelo creates work that moves at the speed of culture. Bringing POPULA into the business is not just about deepening our capability, but accelerating our creative model for the future.
“Jay and Mitch bring incredible pedigree and experience from leadership roles at Meta and Google that, combined with our scale and end-to-end capabilities, help to further forge our mission to create the most modern marketing agency in the world.”
As part of the integration, the POPULA team has joined Akcelo’s Sydney office. POPULA clients will continue to be serviced as usual, with the added benefit of Akcelo’s wider capabilities spanning creativity, technology, CX, production, experiential and AI.
For Akcelo’s existing client partners, the deal delivers deeper expertise in mobile-first creativity and social storytelling across platforms.
POPULA co-founder Morgan said, “We started POPULA to create ideas that connect with people where they are today.
“During our times at Google and Meta we consistently heard from Australia’s biggest brands that they felt they weren’t making the most of the opportunity to connect their brand with where culture happens today.
“From day one, our goal has been to make advertising that works with the way people actually use platforms.
“Joining Akcelo means we can keep that focus while scaling it to new levels, which is a really exciting step for us and for the brands we work with. We’re thrilled we’ve already been able to deliver the benefits to new clients.”