Why strong PR is the missing ingredient in successful agency exists
How well executed strategies help advertising and marketing agencies working towards investment or an exit.
Advertising and marketing agencies have been on a trading rollercoaster over the past three years.
Post Covid, agency business was booming. Organic growth boomed and so did the appetite of marketing groups to do deals, fuelled by buoyant numbers and lofty projections. As an agency boss at that time, it felt as if we were over the worst and the future was overwhelmingly positive. In 2022, Moore Kingston Smith’s media and marketing services M&A tracker recorded a staggering 451 marketing and advertising agency deals in the UK alone, higher than any of the previous pre-pandemic years.
The following 24 months presented a very different story. With the shadow of war in Europe and the Middle East, geo-political instability led to macro-economic nerves. Alongside this, the rise of AI and talk of consultancy services being wiped out by bots fuelled nervousness. Agencies working hard on their three-year exit plan found values diminishing. By 2024, agency dea…
