Mark Penn’s deal to merge ad holding company MDC into his tech-based Stagwell Group has finally gone through after Stagwell sweetened its offer following objections by some shareholders. MDC has resolutely failed to make money despite owning some strong agency ...
Read More »More strife for MDC but CEO Penn paints a rosier picture
As usual with MDC Partners there’s red ink all over the numbers as it lost $237 million in Q4 2020, $243m for the full year. The owner of Anomaly, CPB, 72andSunny et al blamed this chiefly on an impairment charge. ...
Read More »Decision time for Accenture as it weighs bid for MDC
Accenture Interactive has had a great time for the past few years as it has cherry-picked creative agencies and lured a few big international marketers with its pitch as the “global experience agency.” But it hasn’t quite happened yet even ...
Read More »Karina Wilsher moves up to become Anomaly global CEO
Holding company MDC Partners may be in a permanent state of seeming crisis but Anomaly, the agency founded by the UK’s Carl Johnson, seems to sail serenely on, oblivious to the burning timbers and falling masonry. Now CEO Johnson is ...
Read More »Forsman & Bodenfors absorbs KBS as owner MDC Partners faces restructuring
When top Swedish creative shop Forsman & Bodenfors joined MDC Partners a couple of years ago we noted it was a high risk strategy and events seem to be bearing this out. Originally F&B was to be combined in an ...
Read More »MDC Partners on sale block after CEO Kauffman quits
Who’s going to buy MDC Partners now? We’ve asked this question before (and had no takers) but chairman and CEO Scott Kauffman has resigned after three years during which time the company seemed to be recovering until it missed all ...
Read More »MDC’s woes are the tip of a creative agency crisis
Is the tide going out for creative agencies, a sort of tsunami in reverse? Yesterday MDC Partners stock took a powder as CEO Scott Kauffman (below) announced “unacceptable” earnings for the first quarter, a nasty surprise as MDC outperformed its ...
Read More »MDC’s 72andSunny tipped to win Uber globally
Ad Age reckons Uber is about to appoint MDC Partners’ 72andSunny (left) as its first global creative agency. Uber, which has recently lurched from one disaster to another but that’s not so strange on the West Coast these days, has ...
Read More »WPP tops R3’s 2017 new business league – MDC on the up
Consultancy R3 has been rounding up 2017’s account wins and losses to date and, surprisingly perhaps given its widely reported travails, WPP is the clear leader with over 1300 wins amounting to $579m in annualised new business revenue. R3 Principal ...
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