MSQ Partners is jumping into bed with former Blue 449 chief executive Simon Davis to open a new independent media planning and buying agency, Walk-In Media.
Davis quit Blue 449 (previously Walker Media) in April after nearly 13 years with the agency, soon after Publicis Group took full control of the business.
The new agency will draw upon MSQ’s broader multi-disciplinary capabilities such as performance marketing, data and analytics, creative and martech, as part of plans to deliver a joined-up service tailored to each client’s individual communications needs.
Walk-In Media will be based at MSQ’s London hub. This, it claims, will enable the team to work in close collaboration, where relevant, with both full-service agency The Gate London, and performance media digital agency Twentysix.
It will also plug into MSQ’s existing international creative and media capability, which extends across eight markets, including San Francisco, New York, Singapore and Shanghai.
Walk-in Media aims to remove the barriers that Davis insists are increasingly preventing clients from working effectively with media agencies, tackling the inflexibility, trust and transparency issues, whilst also providing greater scale and more capabilities than independents.
Davis said: “The move to impersonal, centralised specialist practices by the big holding companies may serve the biggest spending global clients, but it has hollowed-out their media agencies and damaged the quality of their service to mid-sized and smaller clients who are now being neglected.
“Walk-In Media will offer the service, transparency and breakthrough thinking you would hope for from an independent media agency, but with a global footprint and full specialist capabilities including digital performance, tech, data and content, from day one.
“Whether you are an advertiser of scale questioning the quality of service and output from your big holding company media agency, or a scaling-up advertiser looking to move to the next level of growth, we will be able to provide the full service you need to deliver results. Feel free to walk in for some grown up advice.”
MSQ chief executive Peter Reid said: “Our support of Simon’s launch shows our enthusiasm for working with the best talent out there. Our recent investment allows us to take better advantage of new opportunities, and we believe that being able to offer the full suite of marketing services will provide our clients with more effective joined-up communications.”
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