A London-based marketing entrepreneur has his sights set on building the next “disruptive” full service agency group.
His name is Joe Kaul and he runs a six-year-old B Corp digital agency called Onqor.
His ambitious plan is to build a marketing group over the next 12 to 18 months comprised of 1,500 people with capabilities across creative, production, PR and other marketing services operating in the UK, European Union countries and the U.S.
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Apparently Kaul has backing from a “family investment firm” for acquisitions.
Now, don’t scoff. That’s my job.
The odds of creating any successful new business aren’t good, let alone in the hugely competitive marketing services space.
But it can be done. Look at David Jones the founder of Brandtech Group. Eight years in and Jones has a company with over $1 billion in revenue and 7,000 employees.
Of course he was an industry wunderkind before setting off on his own. Jones got his first CEO job at the tender age of 32 running one of the big Havas Group agencies and ended up running the entire group for three years, before handing it off to Bollore Group scion Yannick Bollore.
That’s the kind of track record that draws investment money outside of the family—In Jones’ case about $350 million to start and he was off to the races.
I’m not aware of any holding group experience held by Kaul, not that it’s necessary. But last year he was named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30 list in the media and marketing category for Europe.
According to the Forbes writeup Onqor is a marketing and technology agency that only works with ESG-compliant brands. The agency also introduced a four-day workweek, “improving productivity, happiness and retention.”
Sounds like Kaul has very competent PR representation. Whether he walks the walk on his ambitious growth plans, well, I guess we’ll see.