Hero founder Ben Lilley adds creative agency Magnum Opus Partners

Ben Lilley's independent agency Hero has added Melbourne creative agency Magnum Opus Partners (MOP) into its national offering.

MOP founder Mike Allen, CEO Erin Lightfoot and creative director Pat Langton will join Hero's leadership team, and their staff will be combined with Hero's Melbourne team.

Hero founder Lilley said: "We’re rapt to welcome Mike, Erin and their brilliant clients and team to Hero. Not only are they an awesome bunch of people, their deep expertise in property and government communications in particular is a superb complement to Hero’s national offering of best-in-class services across Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane."

Allen commented: "I couldn’t be more proud of what Magnum Opus has achieved over the past 30 years, as an independent leader in the Australian marketing landscape. I’ve known Ben for 20 of those years and am immensely impressed with what he and his team have achieved over the past 2 years.

"Hero’s full suite of integrated services is unmatched in the independent agency sector and is custom made for future-thinking clients and businesses. This will now be key to the ongoing delivery of our own “Results. Nothing Less.” philosophy which has stood us in such good stead for so long," he added.

Lightfoot said: "I’m excited by the immense opportunities we can now offer our clients and team alike at HERO. Our business has steadily built a reputation for strategically driven creativity and support for our clients. Now we can also offer an impressive range of additional market-leading Australian and global integrated services."

Lilley added: "The unique benefits of our national offering, integrated under our philosophy of Borderless Creativity, have been embraced over the past 12 months by flagship clients like Toyota, Topo Chico, Maybelline and v2food.

"And have seen Hero rank in the top agencies at the Australian and APAC Effies. We’re excited to be able to now extend these services to Magnum Opus’ client roster, a number of whom we have already begun to work with our media and technology teams," he concluded.

The addition of MOP follows rapid growth for Hero since it launched in October 2020, following the acquisition of McCann Australia, as well as The Red Republic, Smart, JSA Digital and BBE.