Jon Bond Is Building a Marketing-Services 'Cooperative'

http://adage.com/agencynews/article?article_id=144355

Four months after departing Kirshenbaum Bond Senecal & Partners, the New York agency he co-founded in 1987, Jon Bond -- backed with some $100 million in financing -- is setting out to build a new marketing services entity to rival Kirshenbaum's owner, MDC Partners, and other holding companies, according to several industry executives.

The entity is being dubbed a "cooperative" to prospective partners and touted as an alternative structure to the current advertising and marketing holding-company model. Mr. Bond is said to have met with some 80 to 100 marketing services firms and tech outfits , in the U.S. and in Europe with a range of specialties. People familiar with the situation said Mr. Bond has raised $100 million from multiple resources and has invested his own money into the venture, too.

He has pulled the trigger on investing in a handful of firms so far, including: Crimson Hexagon, a Cambridge, Mass., provider of real-time market research; Klout, a San Francisco influencer tracking tool; Boston-based Dataxu, a demand-side platform; and Boulder, Colo.-based Victors & Spoils, which calls itself an ad agency built on crowd-sourcing principles. The latter attracted the most attention in adland, partly because the shop put out a press release announcing Mr. Bond's investment, and partly because the principals at the shop hail from MDC's premiere agency, Crispin Porter & Bogusky.