PR Week: Evolving the Agency Model
The digital revolution has left major brands unsatisfied, unsure if they’re getting the most out of their marketing dollars. It has opened the door for smaller entities that are unencumbered by legacy business structures and are empowered by disruptive technologies, firms that can create groundbreaking work and compete with established holding companies for lucrative business from blue-chip brands.
That’s Mark Penn’s view of the marketing landscape and the impetus behind The Stagwell Group, an evolving holding company he founded last summer. He sees Stagwell, officially an investment advisory firm, as the challenger brand to the WPPs and Omnicom Groups of the world. He believes he can build a more collaborative, nimbler group of agencies.
“Stagwell is the new kid on the block,” he stresses during our interview in his K Street office in DC. “We are putting together a group of companies in the marketing services area with leading-edge creativity, great analytics, and strong depth in digital.”
There are self-implied dictates: No rosters of PR or marketing agencies doing virtually the same thing while competing against one another. Stagwell’s firms must be digitally driven. And agency CEOs must not look forward to retirement; rather, they must prove collaborative and work with sister shops in an era when household name brands seek their own version of cross-agency groups such as WPP’s Team Detroit.
