An entity with minority and majority ownership stakes in various ad agencies is generally referred to as “a holding company.” But the founder/chairman/president/CEO of MDC Partners–which holds a minority interest in SHOOT‘s Agency of the Year, Crispin Porter+Bogusky (CP+B)–dismisses that description when applied to his firm.
“We’re not a holding company,” says Miles Nadal of his company, which is traded on the Toronto Stock Exchange and on NASDAQ. “We’re an operating group, a strategic partner for a network of entrepreneurial firms. We provide financial support and other resources to help [creative ad shops]….For example, we’re very much involved in the strategy and structure of incentive plans because attracting and retaining talent is critical to an agency’s success.”
MDC holds a stake in several hot creative ad shops, such as Cliff Freeman and Partners, New York, Kirshenbaum Bond+Partners, New York, Margeotes Fertitta Powell, New York, VitroRobertson, San Diego, Mono, Minneapolis, Colle+McVoy, Minneapolis, and Zig, Toronto.
Nadal defines MDC’s role as being supportive of those agencies, freeing them to be as creative as possible. MDC bought a 49 percent stake in CP+B in 2001. Chuck Porter, chairman of CP+B, says, “We’ve had some explosive growth and we’ve been courted by a lot of networks. From the day we met them, MDC Partners was uniquely appealing as a partner because their priority was to keep us in the game and let us do what we do best.”
By contrast, the typical stigma attached to so-called “holding companies” is that they have become bottom-line driven to a fault, at times diminishing rather than nurturing the creative cultures at ad agencies. Ironically, the health of those creative cultures is integral to a successful bottom line over the long haul.
“Our role is to facilitate, not mandate,” relates Nadal. “We’re not looking for attribution in terms of our role as it relates to the agencies we partner with.” He notes that CP+B owes its success to its “brilliant people and their passion to build brands, which have led to the agency being “in a league of its own creatively.”
Nadal adds, “The timing has also been fabulous in that there’s now a growing realization in the marketplace that how many offices you have, how many countries you’re in, isn’t all that relevant. To create in ways that define and contribute to the brand has become keenly valued and that is what has helped spur [CP+B] on to its phenomenal success.”
