Pictured: Screengrab from the Sparkler website

The Sparkler business will now become PA’s human insight team, and be known as PA Consulting. According to a LinkedIn post from Sparkler, its ‘people, expertise and passion remain unchanged’.

London-based Sparkler was founded in 2001 by John Robson and Magnus Willis. It was awarded Best Agency with turnover under £20m at the MRS Research Live awards in 2017.

PA Consulting acquired Sparkler in May 2018 and Robson and Willis left the business in December 2021. Sparkler has increasingly been working as an ‘integrated part of PA’, the company said in its LinkedIn post.

Retiring the Sparkler brand is part of a broader move by PA Consulting to bring together the company’s design, engineering and science skills with its wider innovation services, with the combined team partnering on ‘new growth platforms for clients’.

The strategy will integrate the roster of design, engineering and innovation businesses acquired by PA, which, in addition to Sparkler, comprises Essential Design, Astro Studios, Cooper Perkins, and most recently, Dublin-based Design Partners. The combined team will operate under the PA brand.

Frazer Bennett, global head of design, engineering, and science, PA Consulting, said: “Great minds don’t think alike. That’s why bringing these diverse teams together is an incredible opportunity for our clients and for our own people. Success calls for the perfect blend of insight, born of experience and imagination.”

In 2020, professional services company Jacobs took a 65% stake in PA through a ‘private equity style’ investment.

On its website, Sparkler said: “The reason that we joined PA in the first place was because we recognised the value to our clients and our own people of being able to combine advanced thinking and creativity, with the ability to build and implement on a global scale. By having this under one roof, we are able to help all our stakeholders move forward further and faster.”