Market Gravity + Deloitte: One Year Later. A perspective from the acquirer and the acquiree.

The last year has flown by, it almost feels like I’ve blinked and suddenly it’s summer again. On June 1st last year, Market Gravity joined forces with Deloitte. If you’re interested in what it’s like to experience the small firm joining the behemoth then I recommend you read Pete Sayburn's (Market Gravity co-founder) piece.

I thought I’d share from my own perspective as an employee what the experience has been like while I would also get the perspective of one of our acquirers, Gord Sandford who heads up Deloitte Digital in Canada.  

Iain on being acquired….

After 5-ish years working in an incredibly dynamic, hands on, creative and empowering organization it’s a shock to the system being acquired by the global big boy, especially one that has its legacy in audit, tax and accountancy. My world of innovation was very different to this, needless to say, I wasn’t feeling terribly optimistic about how it would pan out.

It’s not all been easy, process, compliance and independence restrictions have been an enormous pain in the backside this year. Throw in some more traditional ways of working, hierarchy and how the partner business model works and there’s a recipe for getting pretty frustrated. We’ve had more than a few therapy sessions as a team over beers this year.

But, and it’s a big one. I’m blown away by how warmly we’ve been welcomed into Deloitte from all over the firm and the potential of what we can create together. The amount of time we’ve had from people like Gord, but also partners, managers and consultants from across the whole business. This time last year we had a team of just 3 in Canada, heck, we’d only been incorporated in Canada for about 4 months. Now we’ve grown to 16 talented young consultants and designers, not forgetting a supporting cast across a team of 9,000.

Every week I’m meeting new people within the company with capabilities I didn’t realize existed, who are looking to work together and make a big impact on our clients. We’ve teamed up with Deloitte colleagues to launch new lottery games, design cannabis brands, collaborate on projects across property, travel, logistics, government, retail and beyond. We’re even treating Deloitte as our own client to create new service offerings that could transform the model of a professional services firm so watch this space.

I’ve heard it time and time again over the last year how we’re changing the perspective of Deloitte in Canada and long may that continue. There’s not a great track record of the big boys successfully acquiring, retaining talent and ‘integrating’ the boutique, but we might just be onto something here and that's very exciting!

Gord on acquiring Market Gravity…

A little over a year ago our Global Corporate Development team informed us of a potential acquisition target – Market Gravity who were just beginning operations in Canada. They described it as a firm focused on innovation with a particular competency in Rapid Proposition Design – a new brand, product, service – in just 4 weeks.

I was very intrigued. When I started Digital over 5 years ago, I always felt it was much more than websites and mobile apps. There was a new normal and DIGITAL was all about getting to market quickly and being able to pivot fast. It was about understanding unmet needs and friction and it was about telling great stories and having great experiences. That was DIGITAL to me and a firm that specialized in Rapid Proposition Design was exactly what we needed.

I got to meet Iain and some other leaders like Paul Bowman, now taking this capability around the world, and I really liked them and what they described they did – but I was worried about how they would adjust to being part of large team. I knew we had to protect the ‘secret sauce’ of what we had acquired but also make them understand the true depth of the team. I also wanted to use Market Gravity as catalyst to change the firm to be more DIGITAL.

One year later I can say that they have had a tremendous impact on the firm and our market. Starting with our clients where we have created a number of new offerings that are or will be hitting the market very soon – truly changing their business. For a small team to experience the growth in the last 12 months is phenomenal, they’re having a disproportionate impact given their size. Senior leaders recognize how the team are learning the way things working, challenging convention and changing the image of the Deloitte brand in the firm. We are able to combine Market Gravity with Deloitte to help our clients get to market with the new offerings. We are able to change the value proposition to something where we only get paid when the client is achieving its own success – that is very valuable in the Digital era.

It’s not all been easy, it can be exhausting to convince our existing Deloitte team of their capabilities. Lucky for us we have been able to SHOW them and we’ve applied it to ourselves to change our own offerings, which has proven to be very valuable in demonstrating the capabilities of this great team.

It’s a classic scenario where the lessons we are learning are the same we warn our clients about all the time, change is often hard! We didn’t want to just add Market Gravity but we wanted to change our business and this takes real effort.

We have big aspirations for Market Gravity over the next year. Combined with our world-class Doblin Innovation and Applied Design capabilities, we want to help our clients to change their business and their markets. We want help put our enterprises on the global map as the leading examples of applying human centered design to innovate and change your business. It’s a simple goal, we want to be the example globally of innovation in the Digital era.  

We have proven we have a great team – now we just have to make it happen!