"To describe RAPT Creative's debut performance as 'successful' would be an understatement; 'stellar'' is a more apt description," says SCOPEN partner and CEO of Independent Agency Search & Selection Company (IAS) Johanna McDowell. 

"It is quite remarkable that such a relatively young agency like RAPT Creative debuted so high on the Agency Performance Table," McDowell adds. 

"Both President and CEO of SCOPEN International Cesar Vacchiano and I noted this achievement and were delighted to see such strong results for an agency that was new to the study and relatively new in the South Africa agency landscape," McDowell says. 

Since 1990, SCOPEN's studies (called SCOPEs) have aimed to offer in-depth intelligence across various areas of the communication, marketing and advertising industries and identified needs, marketplace dynamics and future trends for:
  • advertisers
  • agencies, and
  • media professionals.

AGENCY SCOPE, for example, is published every two years after in-depth meetings with the highest-level decision-makers across marketing, communications and advertising from the largest to the smallest-spending marketers in South Africa. It identifies trends within the advertiser-agency relationships and the perception and image of the agencies. 

"RAPT Creative is blown away by its top-10 ranking in nine out of 11 categories deemed most important to agency performance by SCOPEN, and over the moon that, of those nine, it ranked as number one agency in four categories: Account service, Integrated services, Innovation and Data / analytics," says founder and CEO Garreth van Vuuren. 

"We are also excited by our third-place ranking for Digital Capabilities, fourth for Value for Money and fifth for Effective Creativity," adds van Vuuren. 

"RAPT Creative has been working particularly hard on ensuring that we have the best-integrated capabilities that will allow us to be more effective and efficient with the work we produce. We'll be using this report as a tool in our business planning to identify opportunities and weaknesses for us to work on," van Vuuren says. 

The agency, which opened its doors just before the global pandemic spiked, says that it achieved 100% revenue growth year-on-year during 2020 and 2021 by pivoting to brand solutions for its clients during lockdown to ensure they continue to stay top of mind and grow revenue. 

The agency concludes that this was a rarity when many were seeing major retrenchments and shutdowns, a fact acknowledged when it was named Small Agency of the Year by Financial Mail's AdFocus in November 2022 and a finalist for Financial Mail's AdFocus Medium Agency of the Year for 2023. Van Vuuren was also personally honoured for the part he played in the agency's success when he was named as one of Mail & Guardian's top 200 Young South Africans for 2023.

SCOPEN's 2023 / 2024 Agency Scope for South Africa conducted 528 interviews in total with 312 marketing professionals from:
  • 220 companies
  • 155 creative-agency professionals
  • 45 media-agency professionals, and
  • 16 media owners.

For more information, visit www.raptcreative.com. You can also follow RAPT Creative on Facebook or on Instagram.