Here’s what it means to win a Smart50 Award: Untitled Group

The Smart50 Awards 2024, sponsored by Optus Business, are open today. Previous Smart50 winners include some of the most successful Australian businesses of the 21st century, high growth, high-success companies such as Adore Beauty, Atlassian, Canva, Vinomofo and Untitled Group.

What does it mean to win a Smart50 award?

Last year’s overall winner was Untitled Group, with a remarkable 597.4% growth average over the past three financial years. Underlining its excellence, Untitled Group, founded by Nicholas Greco, Filippo Palermo, Christian Serrao and Michael Christidis, also took home the 2023 Marketing Award.

Untitled Group has a fantastic brand arc and narrative: founded in Melbourne in 2017 as an independent events company they (of course!) were hit extremely hard by the lockdowns of the pandemic years, and had to explore new markets and revenue options. This tenacity earned Untitled Group the Resilience Award at the Smart50 Awards 2022, and last year it was clear that their resilience has paid off in a major way.

How have things been going over the last 12 months?

“It was such an honour to be recognised as the fastest-growing company in last year’s Smart50,” said co-founder Christian Serrao. “It really helped to validate our growth with our team, and the market.”

“How has business gone over the past 12 months? Well, we now have a team of 70, quite an increase year-on-year. And we’ve seen another 43% growth in revenue over the last year.”

Last summer saw many Australian music festivals cancelled, and a gloomy general sentiment.

But Untitled Group emphatically bucked the trend, with its festivals Beyond The Valley and Wildlands having their biggest ticket sales ever (35,000 sell out for BTV, 85,000 attendees around the country for Wildlands).

“The last 12 months have seen some incredible growth across our touring and festivals businesses, with record numbers at our Beyond the Valley and Wildlands events.”

“We also brought out a bunch of amazing artists to Australia including Zach Bryan and Christina Aguilera. Later this year we have some huge, mostly sold-out Dom Dolla shows.”

“This will be his biggest tour ever, a national tour in epic venues, with multiple dates at The Domain Sydney, Riverstage Brisbane and Flemington Racecourse Melbourne.”

And of course, Untitled Group has a number of growing, non-live components to their diverse business.

“Although events are our bread and butter we also have a number of vertically aligned business,” said Serrao.

“We are seeing great success from our creative and marketing agency Underscore, our talent agency Proxy, and our sustainable vodka, Ugly Vodka, which is about to embark on a national ranging deal with Coles.”

Untitled Group has a big summer ahead, with vodka cans in Coles, work with the Australian Open and AFL in the pipe, and a heap of exciting live events.

“Our company motto is we create unforgettable experiences,” said Serrao. “And we continue to have a really strong focus on community and experience, that’s our focus.”

On the back of every event, Untitled Group communicates with its community and uses that feedback to improve its processes and experiences, in a quest to constantly improve its business.

It seems to be paying off.

Entries for the 2024 Smart50 Awards, sponsored by Optus Business, are now open. Sign up to get all the latest updates. 

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