We advise advertising agencies, advertisers, and private equity firms: 

 

1. We offer advisory services to PE firms on the sale, merger, or acquisition of marketing communication agencies. The agencies range from full service advertising agencies to specialized digital, sales promotion, media, PR, licensing, direct marketing, and direct response. Our clients are primarily private equity investment houses and advertising agency groups looking to enlarge their domestic or international footprint or expertise.                                                                                         

2. We offer advisory services to agency principals who are looking to capitalize on their successes through possible sale of their agencies and advising them on exit strategies as well as valuations and introducing them to potential investment partners as well as protecting the human capital assets that work for them.                                                                                                                                               

3. We offer consulting services to CEOs, CMOs, and CFOs of consumer product and business-to-business companies on selection of new ad agencies as well as evaluating their existing marketing communications relationships, structure, and costs. This includes analysis of marketing service needs, analysis of current expenditures, forecasts, and creative work product. Our new agency search work (digital, sales promotion, media, PR, creative, licensing, direct marketing, and direct response, or full service) includes negotiating agency compensation agreements, agency on-boarding, and relationship management.                                                                                                          

4. We consult with the CMO and CEO offering hands-on strategic help in tackling unforeseen developments and conditions impacting business where there is immediate need to create and implement new marketing and sales tactics programs that the current organization is not equipped to handle in the immediate time frame. We have taken assignments globally, and where necessary, have functioned as interim management during transitions. We have also taken lead in sourcing product, improving QC, as well as identifying new distributors and managing the change from existing distributors.

 

 

     We are neither a big firm nor a firm with virtual offices. When hired, clients get the collective thinking of partners living in close proximity to each other, who work together every day.

 

     We have no templates. Each client is unique, as is the level of service required.

 

 

More often than not, when we are called in to solve a problem or conduct a search, the cause is an unforeseen cataclysmic event, not an evolutionary change.

 

     For example, when an important new product launch did not go as expected, and we were asked to participate directly with current team members, we arrived, as a team, at new positioning, creative, packaging and promotion to reenergize the products and developed alternative advertising for the CMO to consider. We functioned as part of the team in a non-threatening, non-adversarial manner.  We did bring in a new agency. But in this case, only to develop a short term DRTV solution keeping both other agencies on the roster and we also worked at rebuilding the client trust and the client-agency relationships.

 

 

 

     Another example, in an actual case, the CEO and CMO felt R&D needed the support and design capability of an outside design company and we suggested looking at Ideo and Frog, among others, to help grow outside the core business. 

 

 

     We've also found ourselves in the midst of a client's competitive landscape that is dramatically changing, or there has been a planned, major strategic and sensitive shift which is being implemented that may include importing outsourced product which affects the labor force, customers, and reputation.

 

     In these cases, it was imperative the leadership team had the right PR partner crafting the public statements, and the right licensing agency bringing the right licensee partners to the table to insure quality never suffers.

 

 

 

     From an investment perspective, we are called in to find agencies in marketing communications that complement a private equity firm's well thought out investment strategy and portfolio vision. While on the other side of the fence, we have had clients who have built their advertising or promotion agencies and have decided to consider the exit options that we have laid out and helped them realize. 

 

     More detailed discussion on agency search & compensation, agency merger, purchase, and sale, and our hands-on work with clients who face difficult and unforeseen challenges that need creative solutions and/or significant tactical support can be found in the five sections under What We Do in the menu bar or the buttons below.