• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, September 16, 2013

WPP chief Martin Sorrell is continuing his strategy of growth through small acquisitions, as expressed by a new deal between WPP agency Ogilvy & Mather and India's PennyWise Solutions. Pennywise -- which employs 140 people but does just $2 million in revenue -- provides mobile application development, SEO, data analytics and business intelligence and counts Vodafone India, Johnson & Johnson and LIN Digital as clients.

There's Madison Avenue in New York and then there's a Madison Avenue in every other city and tiny 'burb the world over. Even in Des Moines. Iowa. And one man, 66-year-old Connor Flynn, aims to make sure everyone outside Des Moines understands there is and was a vibrant advertising community in the city. Flynn has taken it upon himself to compile a history of local advertising firms dating back to 1907. Eighty agencies are on the list so far. The first agency on the list? Paul Lessing which produced direct mail pieces for farm equipment and seed manufacturers. Fun fact? Flynn's grandfather, Roy Flynn, joined Lessing in 1913 and took over the business in 1933.

Speaking of Madison Avenues outside of New York, former Topshop CMO Justin Cooke has plans for the new agency he is founding. Of the new agency, Innovate7, Cooke says: "There's no Apple here, there's no big company, but we think we can build one." Tall order. He adds: "We want to build a company which no one has seen before. It's not really an agency, it's a hybrid of everything. So on the one hand we make and develop the technology but we can also do ads." Ah, yes. Agency as product development company. We've seen that one before. Success has been mixed, but let's face it -- the status quo ain't working and we're all for innovation so here's to yet another agency trying to shake things up a bit.

Hot on the heels of reports stating brands are increasingly launching in-house agencies to handle the bulk of their creative needs, Traction Co-Founder and CEO Adam Kleinberg thinks he has a way that agencies can fend off the threat of the in-house agency. The gist of his argument centers on the need for agencies to be more collaborative with their clients, especially since the type and number of creative elements have exponentially exploded. All of which requires a much more intimate relationship. In addition, Kleinberg posits there will always be a need for 50,000-foot strategic thinking and innovation that often can only come from an outside partner who isn't so myopic about his or her business. Can agencies survive the shift to in-house? What say ye?

Working toward beefing up its creative group, Grey New York has brought in two new group creative directors, Nick Pringle and Steve Wakelam, who together come from DDB Sydney and bring with them some heavy metal in the form of multiple Cannes Lions wins. The pair will work on Febreze, Ally and P&G.

So what do talented ad men like Richard Kirshenbaum, known for his edgy Kenneth Cole ads, do in their spare time? They spend $3 million over the course of four years renovating their home. Yup -- Kirshenbaum just completed a renovation of his 5,000-square-foot, 4-bedroom, 6 bath duplex on Fifth Avenue. Now, let's not be jealous. The man's been working since the mid-eighties when he began his advertising career as a receptionist. There's gotta be some payoff, right? Sadly, some of us just end up writing about rich advertising guys instead of becoming one.