MDC Partners

On May 23rd, NYC based God’s Love We Deliver &#151 an organization that cooks and delivers over 3,400 meals every weekday, to people living with HIV/AIDS, cancer, Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s diseases, and all serious illnesses &#151 is hosting the world’s largest potluck dinner, with the help of MDC Partners agency Redscout (they do strategy, and are branching into execution) and a bunch of other companies that are either donating time or offering services at cost. We wanted to give them a shout-out for their efforts.

Redscout CEO Jonah Disend is on the leadership counsel at GLWD and this project was lead by a managing director there, Patricia Brennan. Redscout developed the potluck concept and the logo and then Patricia brought other agencies and companies on board to help pull it off:

&#151 1TrickPony created the microsite and web banners.

&#151 Wilkins Media helped secure free media space, subway posters and a week of Taxi TV, including video and banners.

&#151 Fluid Post helped produce the video

&#151 Automation Graphics produced posters and over 10,000 postcards designed by Redscout at “unbelievable rates”.

&#151 Beyond Print helped get the subway posters printed in record time and at a fraction of the cost.

So kudos to all involved in this great effort.

More: “Redscout Names President, CCO”

MDC CEO Miles Nadal (center), Chief Innovation Officer Faris Yakob (left) and Chief Creative Insurgent Alex Bogusky (not center or left) talk amongst themselves during Bogusky’s weekly Web show FearLess QA.

More: “McCann Suing MDC Over Alleged Employee/Client Poaching”

In an interview with MDC head Miles Nadal, AdAge’s Rupal Parekh wisely notes: “It’s kind of surprising how little you are investing in digital agencies. Why?”

Nadal’s response:

“Because we have done it the best of anybody. We invested hugely in digital, but we did it organically. One thousand of our people are digital and 40.5% of our business is digital. We have the most integrated and media-agnostic capabilities &#151 we didn’t buy digital as a bolt-on, we wove it into the fabric of our agencies. That’s why our growth rate is better than everyone else in the industry, our margins are better and our free cash flow is better.

“When I look back in hindsight at what others have paid for businesses in digital, we couldn’t rationalize the costs in relation to what the benefits would be. Investing in talent was a much better and more productive investment for us. But you will see us look at digital capabilities to provide a more comprehensive offering to clients, and now that nobody else is in the marketplace, it makes life a lot easier.”

Nadal’s buying spree has many lauding him as an aggressive player at a time when few others are taking such risks. Questions linger regarding how the $300 million in (so-called good) debt will be paid off. Rumors have flown that the holding company is setting itself up for a sale, rumors Nadal strictly denies here.

He made only one mistake from what we can see. And it wasn’t so much a strategic error so much as a semantic one. At one point he said, “to reinvent the model of the future,” &#151 which should never be said aloud. Ever. It is the preeminent advertising-leader cliché and should be avoided at all costs.

More: “MDC Acquires Another Shop, PR Firm Allison & Partners”

Miles Nadal is on a rampage, buying up every moderately-sized-but-well-performing PR and ad agency in the land. That’s a bit of a stretch, but MDC Partners just picked up Allison + Partners, reports PRNewser. It’s a mid-sized PR firm probably bringing in around $14-15 million per year.

Typically MDC purchases 51-61% of a company’s shares, though it also buys them outright. This was a majority buyout, but it isn’t clear how much the holding company now owns. In recent months MDC has invested in Attention PR and acquired Sloane & Company.

On the ad side MDC nabbed Plaid, which has rebranded as Humongo. They’ve also bought Florida based TEAM Enterprises.

More: “MDC Acquires South Florida Experiential Marketing Firm”

The agency known as Plaid will from here-on-out be known as Humongo, which according to UrbanDictionary means “Really really really huge!” The shop announced its acquisition by Norwalk, CT based SourceMarketing earlier today. That agency is owned by MDC Partners.

Just yesterday MDC announced it has purchased south Florida’s TEAM Enterprises, an experiential firm that services Fortune 100 clients.

“We’re pretty stoked,” the agency announced on its blog &#151 brandflakesforbreakfast. “We’ll now have the resources to grow like never before. We’ll have access to affiliate agencies that provide our clients what we can’t. Imagine a small digital creative agency with the keys to the big guys. That’s Humongo.”

You know Plaid, err, Humongo, from their tours-de-America in a van. The annual trip was called PlaidNation but will from here on is called HumongoNation. This is their video about the changes.

Meet Humongo from Humongo on Vimeo.

More: “MDC Acquires South Florida Experiential Marketing Firm”

MDC Partners announced today that it’s acquired a majority stake in TEAM Enterprises, a Fort Lauderdale-based experiential marketing firm with 400 full-time staffers that services Fortune 100 clients. According to the latter’s site, the company has activated campaigns including the Dodge “Rock Em Sock Em” challenge, Bacardi Mojito/Miami Vice and several for the Miller brand over the last few years.

More close to home, though, TEAM has collaborated with now-sister MDC firm CP+B on projects for VW, Coke Zero and Domino’s in what MDC chief architect Stephen Groth says is “a seamless blend of interactive and what we call ‘outeractive’ physical experiences.” In a statement, Groth–a former Omnicom exec who spearheaded the acquisition of the 20-year-old TEAM and is overseeing MDC’s experiential “immersion”–adds that “being able to offer these services on a broader scale to all of our MDC firms, and their clients, will have an enormous positive impact across the network.”

More: “Definition 6 Acquires PR Firm that “Really Understands” Integrated Marketing”

If MDC Partners has their way, advertising will soon be an industry of insurgents who live alone in bungalows hidden in various city-centers where advertising normally doesn’t happen. At least that’s the take away from the odd press release they issued today, which seemingly was meant to clear up questions no one asked. We bolded some stuff after the jump, but as far as we can tell, it’s a pointless release you should not waste your precious time reading.

Well, it does seem to answer the “is Alex Bogusky retiring question” by saying he’ll be around for another five years.

Read more

Some of you scoffed when word broke that the University of Colorado at Boulder and Crispin Porter + Bogusky launched Boulder Digital Works, the creative school that kids today are undoubtedly calling the CP+B Factory Farm. The school’s first crop of students have begun their year-long education, and after 10 weeks, they’ve learned some stuff. Cue convenient montage-y video (below).

Though the clip was probably intended to rouse the interest of the actively creative feels a bit like a community college infomercial. Get past that part though and there’s a takeaway on what the 12 students, ages 22-28, have been learning: human-centered design (a theory that, so you know it’s real.

“You’re considering the user, the environment that they’re using it in, how they’re using it,” says Nick Williams, who speaks in the video. But “it” is we still aren’t sure. Probably advertising.

The ten-minute clip is more than you’re going to want, but it’s worth taking a look if you’re into promotional videos. Or reaffirming yourself about the decision to apply next year. Each student has a blog, here.

Lest you’d forgotten, the list of participants in BDW includes: MDC Partners, Hyper Island, Microsoft, Society of Digital Agencies (SoDA), Modernista!, Lynda, Emma Mail and Ruckus Wireless.

MDC Partners’ multicultural marketing agency Adrenalina welcomed four new creatives to the fold including former Bromley AD Mauricio Garcia and AC&M alum Juan Marin as “visual geniuses”. Fernando Paz (ex-Vidal AD) and Hugo Sanchez (ex-JWT Mexico CW) meanwhile join as “senior visual genius” and “senior content genius”, respectively.

If you must know, “Visual genius” is Adrenalina’s cute, perhaps overreaching way of saying art director while “content genius” means copywriter. Regardless, the four new creatives join a handful of other hires made by the New York-based agency in the last year that come from various notable firms like Pentagram and Alma DDB.

More: “Cedric Devitt to ECD at LBi”

Watch out, world, MDC Partners has invested in Attention Partners LLC, a social media marketing and communications agency. Our sibling site PRNewser reported the story yesterday.

Attention founder Curtis Hougland wrote on Attention’s blog about why his company partnered with MDC:

“Well, we are at an inflection point in social media, the shift from early adopter to early majority, a horizontal skill set requiring more and more vertical market expertise. Our appetite for data is voracious; the role of technology in marketing is exploding; our clients are smarter; we require talent equally skilled in data and conversation; and we found a partner who respects our idiosyncratic identity, our DNA. Unlike most potential partners, they respect our entrepreneurship, and won’t, one day, wake-up and join us with an advertising agency. They get it.”

PRWeek later reported that “MDC Partners is looking to find ‘the next Crispin Porter & Bogusky of PR,’ according to chairman and CEO Miles Nadal.”

More: “Cliff Freeman Breaks Free From MDC”