Nadal “more ambitious” than ever to make new acquisitions
MDC Partners has added expertise in two areas where chairman and CEO Miles Nadal said it has been “underweighted,” acquiring majority interests in healthcare focused agency Concentric Pharma Advertising and the New York fashion, lifestyle and luxury goods agency Laird+Partners.
The Concentric acquisition (terms of the deals were not disclosed) represents MDC Partners’ first foray into the burgeoning health care marketing sector. Recently named Agency of the Year by Med Ad News, Concentric’s revenues grew 40% to US$16.5 million in 2010 according to a July report in the trade journal Medical Marketing & Media, while its staff grew by 33% as a result of winning 11 pieces of new business – including being named the US AOR for Enbrel, an arthritis treatment co-marketed by Amgen and Pfizer.
The agency has offices in New York and London, and boasts a client roster that includes several major health care brands including Allergan, Bayer HealthCare, Novartis, Pfizer, Roche and Wyeth.
Laird+Partners is a 75-person shop with a client roster comprised of a who’s who of fashion brands that includes Calvin Klein, Donna Karan, Karl Lagerfeld, Gap and Hermès. It was established in 2002 by Trey Laird, the former executive vice-president and corporate creative director of Donna Karan International.
The two agencies’ client rosters were a big part of why they were targeted by MDC, said Nadal. “At the end of the day you want proof points of success,” he told Marketing during a telephone interview. “The greatest proof point of success is the fact that most iconic, industry-leading advertisers in particular segments are using your firms for their marketing communications activity.”
Nadal said that both Concentric and Laird+Partners were high on the list of several marketing communications firms identified by MDC as acquisition targets.
“They were great at what they did, they had corporate cultures that attracted wonderful people, they had a reputation for doing brilliant work that had made brands famous, and had delivered great return on marketing investment for clients,” he said. “They were firms that we believed, in partnership with MDC, had greater growth potential than they would as a standalone business.”
They are the latest in a string of acquisitions for MDC that also includes a 60% stake in multi-discipline agency Anomaly earlier this year. Last year saw the group complete a spate of deals that included acquiring majority interests in Toronto-based Capital C and the Los Angeles agency 72 &Sunny.
Nadal said that his preference in agency deals is to acquire a majority interest rather than outright ownership. “It preserves the entrepreneurial DNA that made the firm successful, it preserves the unique culture and enables them to feel they control their own destiny,” he said.
MDC is still “very much” in acquisition mode said Nadal, with an eye towards expanding into the European, Asian and Latin American markets within the next year. “I’m actually more ambitious right now than I was six months ago. The economic uncertainty makes it more attractive for us.”
