Mazarine Group acquires Bacchus

Tonic Communications has been appointed by Housing Foundation NZ as its strategic PR and communications partner.

The agency’s remit will span strategic communications, media relations, content, and integrated campaign activity.

As part of the appointment, Tonic will work with Housing Foundation’s marketing team to grow brand awareness, strengthen stakeholder engagement, and increase understanding of its alternative home ownership model.

Tonic Communications Managing Director, Georgia Coleman, said: “Housing Foundation is an organisation with a strong purpose, but also a significant opportunity to further build awareness and understanding of its model.

“Our role is to help sharpen the organisation’s profile, connect with the right audiences and ensure its story is told clearly and consistently across multiple channels.

“There is a growing need for communications that build trust, simplify complexity and create meaningful engagement as conversations around housing accessibility continue across New Zealand.” 

Financial and corporate communications agency, Honner is joining FINN Partners. The move expands FINN's Asia Pacific footprint to Australia and taps into the country's fast-growing investment sector.

The 25-strong Honner team in Sydney will join FINN's global footprint, bringing its worldwide office count to 37, and expanding its APAC team to around 250 people.

Honner founder, Philippa Honner (pictured with FINN CEO, Peter Finn), joins FINN as Managing Partner and FINN Financial Services Practice Lead for APAC, with a mandate of expanding FINN’s financial services practice throughout the Asia Pacific region, including further building the agency’s foothold in the Australian market. She will also become a member of the APAC leadership team and work closely with regional leaders in Greater China, Hong Kong, India, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, and Thailand.

In announcing the move, FINN Partners said the acquisition reflects Australia’s growing strategic importance in powering Asia’s evolving financial services ecosystem, spanning both traditional capital markets and the next generation of digital financial infrastructure.

Howard Solomon, FINN founding Managing Partner and APAC lead will oversee Honner.

"Australia is a key growth market in the region and one we have been looking at very carefully for years. This move further deepens our financial services expertise in APAC and gives us critical mass to support the growing demand from both local and global financial brands in the region. We are very pleased to welcome the Honner team and look forward to growing our collective presence.”

Peter Finn, FINN CEO and founding partner added: "This acquisition builds on the momentum we’ve established across APAC, including last year’s acquisition of RICE Communications. FINN’s APAC business has grown significantly, accounting for nearly 10 per cent of the firm’s global fees. With Honner joining the firm, FINN APAC now has approximately USD$19 million in fees, further strengthening our ability to serve clients seamlessly across the US, EMEA and APAC.”

Honner Founder, Philippa Honner said it was an exciting next step for the Honner team and the agency's clients: "Joining forces with FINN gives us an incredible platform to progress our ambitions to be the leading marketing and communications agency supporting corporate and financial brands across APAC. 

“We look forward to working closely with our FINN colleagues across the region and spending time with our clients to demonstrate the impact of tailored communications strategies across complex APAC markets.”

The agency will be known as “Honner, A FINN Partners Company”. All Honner employees will become FINN employees.

CoInside (pronounced: coincide), a diagnosis-first marketing strategy and go-to-market (GTM) consultancy, has launched in Singapore. Founded by Vanessa Ng, former Head of Marketing at Lendela, and Szecindyo (Chin) Chewandi, former Head of Marcomms and Chief of Staff candidate at holding group Golden Equator, they bring experience across growth strategy, commercial communications, and go-to-market execution in both startup and institutional contexts.

The consultancy works with businesses experiencing growth challenges and go-to-market needs, but have yet to determine whether they need a hire, an agency, or something else entirely. The consultancy operates three service lines, including commercial narrative to support businesses in sharpening their commercial story for clearer positioning and quicker sales closures, as well as growth and distribution, and revenue expansion.

Vanessa said, “It's easy to mistake activity for progress. We've seen businesses spend months executing beautifully on the wrong problem. By the time they realise it, they've lost more than money - they've also lost time. The first brief is rarely the real brief and the diagnostic work of finding what's underneath it isn't glamorous. But it's the difference between marketing that looks good and marketing that actually works."

Chin added, “When the thinking isn't clear, the instinct is to say more, so the messages get longer, and no one remembers them. We call it polished confusion. Our job is to help them get the thinking right first so that everything sharpens with it; people understand the product faster, deals move, and the team stops pulling in different directions.”