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Talk Around the Water Cooler: A Well-Known Media Agency Veteran Is Leaving Giant Group M to Join Small Agency Holding Group That Includes Media Storm and 3 Other Agencies

Aug 26, 2013  •  Post A Comment

"A well-known senior Madison Avenue [media] executive … is leaving the biggest agency holding group for one that, if not the smallest, is certainly the newest." writes our good friend Stuart Elliott in The New York Times.

The executive in question is Antony Young.

Writes Elliott: "Mr. Young is becoming president of the Water Cooler Group, which is being formed to be the parent of four agencies — Bolt, Hip Genius, Maude and Media Storm — that specialize in tasks like media planning and buying, social media, creative and content development and interactive television. Clients of the agencies in the new holding group include Connecticut Tourism, Food Network, Fox Sports 1, FX, Major League Soccer, MLB Network, MTV, Open Road Films, TV One, Viggle and WE tv.

"Before joining the Water Cooler Group, Mr. Young held top posts at Mindshare, a media agency owned by the GroupM division of WPP, which is the world’s largest family of agencies — at least until the completion of the merger, announced last month, of the Omnicom Group and the Publicis Groupe to form the Publicis Omnicom Group. Before his work at Mindshare, Mr. Young held a top post at Optimedia, part of the ZenithOptimedia Group division of Publicis.

The story adds: "’What Mindshare and GroupM are doing is some of the best work in the marketplace,’ Mr. Young said. ‘But there are clients — and, frankly, agency people — who are looking for something different, an alternative,’ he added, particularly on a smaller scale than the giant media agencies that keep ‘getting bigger.’"

Young is considered one of the media executives who focus on brand strategy. In fact, several years ago, partially under the auspices of our sibling publication Advertising Age, Young wrote a book called "Brand Media Strategy."

To read more details about the Water Cooler Group, we urge you to click on the link in our first paragraph, above, and read Elliott’s quite thorough article.

antony young.jpgAntony Young

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