Media Buying Briefing: Understanding 24 Seven’s move to become a mini-holdco with three complementary agencies

One connective through-line among all these players is their backgrounds and histories in the world of finance — an industry they left to blaze their paths in the agency world, but one that lets them understand each other in a short-hand way that only finance and ex-finance people get. They also adhere to the no-asshole rule.

Markacy, Futureman and SketchDeck all will continue to operate stand-alone and plan to keep their operating models intact, besides going to market together where it makes sense, and finding it a lot easier to hire given their attachment to 24 Seven. They are cross-selling services among each other, with guidance from 24 Seven, whose evp of operations Tyler Zara is charged with “making sure they’re all singing from the same hymnal,” as he put it.

Zara handles M&A for the firm and essentially oversees the agencies in which 24 Seven and Morgan Stanley Capital Partners have invested — declining to identify purchase prices for the agencies. 

“As we looked at the growth strategy for SketchDeck, there was a great organic story, but there were pieces of the puzzle that were missing around digital and experiential and high end creative,” said Zara, who went out and got them in Futureman and Markacy. “We’ve got great lead flow [among the agencies]. Things are working really well, but we’re going to continue to evolve how we go to market together. There’s always kinks in the road as far as integration, but I think we’re well along the path to integrating.”

The secret sauce, to Zara’s thinking, is the ability to plus 24 Seven’s clientele into the agencies where needed — and vice versa. “We have this powerful sales engine where we’re a trusted advisor for talent,” he added. “So now it’s just giving that opportunity to bring a lot more to our clients with the agencies we have.”

The building of the group started with SketchDeck, which morphed from a tech platform/software firm into a creative agency focused on brand work for clients, said Chris Finneral, SketchDeck’s founder and now an svp with 24 Seven. For him, besides the lead generation he gets from 24 Seven’s client base, the talent pool he can access is just as important. 

“Every time we’ve had to expand into big new clients, or there’s a client with a really niche-like need, we can tap into their staffing team, and there’s access to, like, a million-plus creatives that they have relationships with,” said Finneral. “So that allows us to really scale up very quickly.”

Futureman’s president Jamey Berry, whose agency is about to turn 15, said he’s turned down several offers from other PE firms, having heard horror stories about PE ownership, before agreeing to get bought by 24 Seven/MSCP. 

“It was the unexpected Tinder date that worked,” Berry quipped. “We were kind of at a spot where it was acquire or be acquired, as we wanted to expand. When I met with Tyler at first, it was not ‘Hey, we can integrate you into Chris’s platform.’ It was ‘Hey, there are things that SketchDeck doesn’t offer, that you guys can offer.”

For his part, performance shop Markacy’s co-founder and co-CEO Tucker Matheson said it’s the easy fit with the other agencies that’s working for him — although he’s partnered informally with Futureman in the past. “Having branding and creative now in our wheelhouse as a cross sell is very organic to what we do,” said Matheson. “So we’ve found opportunities to tap these guys in … and it’s not like we’re doing a lot of work to do that. Our clients have these needs, and now we have the capabilities.”

There is a middle layer at the 24 Seven level consisting of a core sales team that’s part business development and part account management, overseeing lead gen proposal writing and connecting the dots between the teams. Otherwise, the operation from a 24 Seven perspective is pretty lean, added Zara.

Finally, he said the 10-year relationship MSCP is pretty ideal because it’s hands-off enough — a rarity for PE partners in many cases with agencies — to let 24 Seven make executional decisions. “They don’t get too involved in that process. I think they’re aligned at the strategy level with us,” he said. “They trust us on the execution that we know the right fit for the business and that we like the profile.”

But like most PE firms, there are bullish growth expectations — around 30% in revenue, which is on the high end of agency growth these days, unless you’re starting from a low base. These shops are all mature enough that they’re no longer achieving that on their own, but given the vitamin B12 shot of leads from 24 Seven, they all expect to deliver on those growth expectations.

Color by numbers

The concept of personalization in advertising has been around for a while, but hasn’t exactly taken off to the degree, say, creators and influencers have. Still, it’s a legitimate option for marketers and their agencies to consider. But what do consumers think about ad relevance? According to a report from research firm MX8 Labs that surveyed 600 adults in October, while 69% of consumers overall reported seeing at least somewhat relevant ads, that number goes topsy-turvy generationally, with younger audiences more open to advertising’s influence and relevance.

• Overall, 48% of respondents don’t find targeted ads invasive, but that number rises to 51% of millennials, and drops to 40% of boomers;
• 18% of all respondents said they are often influenced by ads (rising to 30% for millennials), while 27% are rarely influenced (rising to 45% for boomers) and 8% say they are never influenced; 
• Among respondents who find targeted ads invasive, brand perception suffers significantly, with 70% of millennials saying it makes them feel less positive about the brand.

Takeoff & landing

• Stagwell’s planned AI-powered audience data platform powered by Palantir, announced a few weeks ago, will use Harvard University’s OpenDP as its privacy layer to protect identity. OpenDP employs a mathematical framework that adds controlled statistical noise to data, ensuring that individual-level information remains unidentifiable. According to Stagwell, the tech is also used by the U.S. Census Bureau.
• Wpromote acquired creative and media shop Giant Spoon to form Wpromote X Giant Spoon, with Wpromote CEO Andrea Bendzick overseeing the merged operation. Giant Spoon’s co-founders Jonathan Haber, Marc Simons and Trevor Guthrie are joining the leadership team. 
• WPP Media expanded its media business with Henkel Consumer Brands across Europe (the CPG firm’s biggest region), bringing its total number of markets in the continent to 30 from 17. WPP cited its Open platform as being instrumental in the expansion, which includes work for such brands as Persil, Schwarzkopf and Perwoll.
• Publicis Groupe launched its Spark Foundry media agency brand in India, and tapped Niti Kumar to be its CEO, moving her from chief growth officer of Publicis Media India. 
• MissionOne Media landed media AOR duties for deli meat brand Land O’Frost, handling planning, buying, analytics and reporting, and influencer implementation, with spend will be focused largely on online video, social, influencer, retail media, and more.
• Personnel moves: Ogury tapped Nicolas Bidon as its new CEO, coming over from WPP Media where he was most recently global CEO of GroupM Nexus … Tinuiti named Amanda Moore its chief revenue officer, coming over from Dentsu’s iProspect where she was chief growth officer … PMG hired Suraj Gandhi as global head of content & studio to scale content creation on the agency’s Alli platform, coming over from IPG Mediabrands, where he was evp, global executive director of performance content … OOH firm Outfront hired Stacy Minero as its new CMO, coming from Epic Games where she was global marketing director. 

Direct quote

“The first thing that we had to do in our strategy was get our mindset right as a company, as an organization, that’s 108 years old, right? 108 years of heritage and history and a role and a place in this industry. But we have to see ourselves going forward as a 108-year-old startup.”

—Justin Thomas-Copeland, CEO of the 4As, who is in the middle of building a new strategic approach for the industry organization. More to come on that.

Speed reading

• Sam Bradley and I dove into what can be expected with the official closure of Omnicom’s acquisition of Interpublic Group. It’s not overstating to say, a lot can be expected.  
• Sam Bradley looked into how CTV providers have been leaning hard on interactive and shoppable formats in recent months to attract more small business and local advertisers to TV for the first time.
• And Digiday’s editors came together to take a big-picture look at the implications of the DOJ’s closing arguments in the Google antitrust trial, leaving the final impact for Google in the hands of Judge Leonie Brinkema.