Media Buying Briefing: How Gale became the “tip of the spear” for Stagwell Media Network’s growing agency roster

By Michael Bürgi

As Stagwell Media Network continues to beef up its offerings by adding creative, commerce and other agencies to its roster, one of its lesser known properties is serving as an internal “influencer” agency — a model for how to build for the future of media, which is anything but media alone.

Multi-discipline agency Gale was founded by CEO Brad Simms back in 2014, as a research and CRM-driven shop that always was intended to be built upon. It was when Simms injected media into the offerings that Gale hit another gear of growth. It now houses a full quiver of offerings from creative to commerce to media to content to research and insights.

“The idea was let’s create something really stable, that we can put things on top of and integrate them,” said Simms, who is also head of product and strategy for Stagwell Media Network (SMN). “Back then we definitely saw that integration and kind of the reassembling of services was where the market was going, primarily driven by where the consumer is going.”

Fast forward to today, and Simms points to SMN having “created a global set of agencies that takes the blueprint that we have figured out at Gale that has gotten us to 700 people and applying it to a network of 5000 people. We built [SMN] in the frame of a complimentary not competitive set of agencies that allow us to replicate what we’ve done at Gale at the Stagwell level ”

Gale has grew its client roster by adding H&R Block a year ago, while also scoring work for Hertz, Hard Rock, Seagate and others. Since 2019, media spend grew from 0 to $850 million in 2021, and Simms expects that number to hit $1 billion by year-end. Given that growth, staffing also grew in that time frame from a little over 200 then to 650 this year.

Simms’ boss, James Townsend, the global CEO for Stagwell Media Network (which is about to be rebranded to reflect its broader mission beyond media), credited Gale with offering a blueprint for the modern agency. “Its success has guided our approach to the Stagwell Media Network,” said Townsend, adding that Gale “has cracked a cultural code of choreographing these diverse skills in a way that is driving exponential growth for its clients – and now too for the clients of the Stagwell Media Network.”

Jay Pattisall, vp and senior agency analyst, credited Gale’s versatility as a good model to emulate, but it’s harder to achieve when merging disparate agencies such as Crispin Porter Bogusky.

“With the lightning in a bottle that Gale has captured by by integrating its media and content and creative execution, Stagwell is attempting to replicate with the inclusion of Crispin Porter Bugusky, Forsman & Bodenfors and Vitro & Partners, which are now part of the media network,” said Pattisall. “It is a step for them to become part of the network, but it won’t truly succeed without the actual merger of a creative company …read more

Source:: Digiday