Ex-Ogilvy exec Martin Verdult to head Sorrell’s new MediaMonks in London
Sir Martin Sorrell’s new company MediaMonks has a new London boss London in Martin Verdult (below), formerly a managing partner at WPP’s Ogilvy Shanghai. Verdult was chosen by Dutch-based MediaMonks before S4C bought it for €300m.
MediaMonks, a production company, is a minnow in London with just 15 people in a townhouse off Regent Street. Verdult says he plans to treble numbers and find a new office.
MediaMonks is bigger around the world employing about 600 people but its scale – or lack of it – in the UK shows the challenge facing the former WPP boss as he tries to build his new venture rapidly. Big operations in London and New York are still reckoned as necessities for agencies – or production companies – trying to win big clients.
It will also be interesting to see if MediaMonks can still attract work from agencies as it sets up in competition to them. This is a Holiday Inn campaign by MediaMonks in China, with Verdult’s old employer Ogilvy Shanghai.
Nothing wrong with it but has Sorrell spent all that money on a fancy corporate video company?