Mark Penn Is out to Reinvent the Ad Holding Company - WSJ
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Mark Penn Is Out to Reinvent the Ad Holding Company - WSJ https://www.wsj.com/articles/mark-penn-is-out-to-reinvent-the-ad-... This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers visit http://www.djreprints.com. http://www.wsj.com/articles/mark-penn-is-out-to-reinvent-the-ad-holding-company-1463082519 BUSINESS | MEDIA & MARKETING | CMO Mark Penn Is Out to Reinvent the Ad Holding Company Stagwell Group is on the prowl for acquisitions as it tries to shake up Madison Avenue Mark Penn, a former executive at WPP and Microsoft, started Stagwell Group last year. PHOTO: BRIAN SMALE By NATHALIE TADENA May 12, 2016 3:48 p.m. ET As a political adviser to Hillary Clinton in 2008, Mark Penn took aim at Barack Obama with the famous “3 a.m.” campaign ad. As a Microsoft strategy guru, he went after Google with a “Scroogled” campaign. Now, Mr. Penn is taking on the ad industry itself. 1 of 4 16/03/2017 17:34 Mark Penn Is Out to Reinvent the Ad Holding Company - WSJ https://www.wsj.com/articles/mark-penn-is-out-to-reinvent-the-ad-... Armed with $250 million in funding, the 62-year-old is building what he hopes will be a new kind of advertising conglomerate to challenge the ultra-scale- driven model of the four giant “holding companies” that dominate the marketplace. His private-equity fund, Stagwell Group, is still hunting for acquisitions after completing three since it was launched last year—public relations firm SKDKnickerbocker, research firm NRG and digital creative agency Code and Theory. Mr. Penn is no stranger to the ad industry he is trying to disrupt. He spent a decade in leadership roles at WPP, the world’s largest advertising company. WPP was one of the giants created through an industrywide spree of deal-making in the 1980s and ‘90s that brought several large media and creative agencies under one roof. Owning several agency networks within a single holding company offers huge scale and the ability to service rival clients without a conflict of interest. A holding company has all the resources in-house to upsell a client to all types of marketing services from advertising to public relations to media buying. But the model of big ad holding companies is now under duress -- with some arguing that the agency model is broken -- as marketers look to further cut agency fees, push for more work for less money, and shift ad budgets to less traditional mediums. Critics of the holding company model abound, claiming they move too slowly, have too many conflicts among the companies under the same umbrella, and are inefficient in how they charge for services. Consulting, digital and technology companies are slowly encroach on holding companies’ turf, and Mr. Penn sees this as an opening to shake up the industry. Stagwell’s current portfolio of companies is projected to generate between $140 million and $150 million in revenue this year, representing double-digit growth from 2015. Former Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer is a core investor in the company. Stagwell is one of several new players seeking to take on traditional ad holding companies with a nimbler and more digital-savvy model. The group has an eye for firms with a strong digital expertise, which could potentially give it a leg up on legacy structures trying to evolve, and firms with CEOs who aren’t ready to retire yet and want to stay on to help grow their agency. Stagwell won’t own multiple agencies within the same discipline, ensuring that operations aren’t duplicated. 2 of 4 16/03/2017 17:34 Mark Penn Is Out to Reinvent the Ad Holding Company - WSJ https://www.wsj.com/articles/mark-penn-is-out-to-reinvent-the-ad-... “In a lot of the big holding companies, there’s so much competition among the companies that that gets in the way of collaboration,” Mr. Penn said. “I can never eliminate that totally, but I’m trying to minimize that in the planning that we do.” The behemoths of the advertising business—dominated by WPP, Omnicom, Publicis and Interpublic—are not going to be easy to topple. WPP, for example, generated revenue of £12.2 billion ($17 billion) in 2015. Stagwell aims to create “a Noah’s Ark with one of a kind,” Mr. Penn said, meaning that its holdings will offer services that complement rather than directly compete with one another. With a résumé that boasts helping elect more than 25 heads of state, Mr. Penn wanted politics to be among Stagwell’s niche areas, along with entertainment and finance. Mr. Penn has worked as a pollster and adviser to politicians including Bill and Hillary Clinton and U.K. Prime Minister Tony Blair. Political mementos in his Washington, D.C., office include a framed a framed front page Washington Post story from 1999 with the headline “Clinton Acquitted,” signed with a personal note from the former president. Mr. Penn co-founded market research firm Penn Schoen Berland in 1975 and sold the business to WPP in 2001. While at WPP, he became the CEO of the company’s Burson Marsteller public relations firm. Mr. Penn left WPP in 2012 to join Microsoft before launching Stagwell last year. Mr. Penn isn’t the only advertising veteran looking to challenge the traditional ad holding company model. Darren Herman, a former Mozilla executive, recently said he is launching a new holding company described on LinkedIn as “the refugee camp for Madison Avenue.” David Jones, the former CEO of holding company Havas SA, last year raised $350 million to launch You & Mr Jones, which invests in companies that will help brands better leverage technology in their marketing efforts. “We are not setting out to replace or compete with holding companies,” Mr. Jones said of his firm. “Eighty percent to 90% of what they do, we don’t want to do.” Stagwell, for its part, is looking to acquire firms that “have gotten to a reasonable degree of scale, primarily in the $40 million to $50 million range,” in terms of 3 of 4 16/03/2017 17:34 Mark Penn Is Out to Reinvent the Ad Holding Company - WSJ https://www.wsj.com/articles/mark-penn-is-out-to-reinvent-the-ad-... revenue, Mr. Penn said. Before selling to Stagwell, SKDKnickerbocker had been pursued by large holding companies, but Managing Director Josh Isay said Stagwell offered a better cultural fit and leadership that understood the firm’s business. “Not having a bunch of competing companies all swimming in the same waters was very important,” he said. Charles Fallon, a partner at SI Partners, which advises creative and digital technology businesses on mergers and acquisitions, said holding companies have an advantage as buyers because they have well-established resources and scale. The sacrifice may be the loss of an agency’s unique culture when it gets rolled up into an existing network, he added. Keeping and attracting talent is what Mr. Penn “found the most troubling” about the big holding companies. To address that at Stagwell, he has half-hour calls with the CEOs of each of his companies every week to check in on new business and operations and maintain a personal relationship. “I’m trying to build something where the partners feel there is a home,” he said. Write to Nathalie Tadena at [email protected] Copyright ©2017 Dow Jones & Company, Inc. All Rights Reserved This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. To order presentation-ready copies for distribution to your colleagues, clients or customers visit http://www.djreprints.com. 4 of 4 16/03/2017 17:34.