• by Larissa Faw , December 8, 2014

(This story has been updated. An earlier version contained a number of statements misquoting MDC Partners CFO David Doft. The revised quotes are based on a transcript provided by the company.)

MDC Partners may only have 3% market share in the U.S., compared with 25% share held by its competitors, but the holding company's 9.4% organic growth is surpassing the 3%-4% industry average.

"I don't know if I sit here and promise double-digit organic growth in an industry that's kind of been growing around three, but we'll surely try,” said company CFO David Doft, speaking at the UBS Global Media and Communications Conference in New York Monday. “But in terms of outperforming in general we do expect that, we should be able to double maybe triple industry growth rates over the coming years.”

MDC Partners attributes its success to its nimble business model. "We are competing against competitors that control 75%, 80% of the market, but their companies are built 60 years, 80 years, a 100 years ago in a very different world," says Doft. " And with that, their stock with all sorts of processes and infrastructure that prevents them from being as nimble from – prevents them from being as innovative and adopting new technologies and tools to drive better results."

Another key to its success is its growth strategy. The holding company does not establish bricks-and-mortar locations in each region. Rather, the company partners with local agencies through minority or majority investments. "The beauty of our model is that, we align with entrepreneurs and we partner with them to grow their businesses over time. And it starts with how we acquire companies, we don't really acquire companies we partner with them. We’re buying a majority stake a controlling stake in their business, but were not buying 100% of the company upfront. If a principle of an agency thinks their best days are behind them, they're looking to get out, they want to sell a 100%, they can do that, but they're going to sell to somebody else, they're not going to sell it to us. If they think their best days are ahead of them and they think they have tremendous opportunity to scale their business and achieve their aspiration, they’re looking for a partner, and maybe they want to take some money off the table and that's okay, but they're looking for a partner to help them grow and that's where we come in," says Doft.

MDC is also benefiting from the evolution of media buying. "The reality is five years ago, we couldn't really compete," says Doft. "And as I'm sure, everyone here in the audience knows media buying had consolidated to five or six global players over the last 15 years to 20 years because it was about scale, right. If you could write the biggest check you had a little bit more negotiating leverage with the media networks." 

"But something has changed in the last few years,” Doft said. “And it's the rise of exchange based trading and media, which has really democratized media buying… it's not the person who writes the biggest check, who gets the best financial performance, it's the person who is the smartest, who is the best analytics, who can adopt technology to drive the best performance that wins and that's a world that we're very comfortable with and we believe we can compete in."

This year, the holding company's network agencies, 72andSunny, KBS, and CP+B, have landed Smirnoff, TE Connectivity, and Infiniti, respectively. "We couldn't have been considered for these pitches going back 18 months or 24 months ago. And the reality is just that, we've been able efficiently build our global capabilities by leveraging technology, deleveraging the globalization of the workforce, to set up regional hubs, where we don't need to replicate the office in every country model that our competitors have," he says. 

MDC Partners' international revenue is currently 7% which Doft expects to reach 15%-20% in the next few years. "So, I think, as long as we can continue to succeed for global brands, we will continue to have opportunity to work with them in more and more markets around the world and grow that business organically," says Doft.