Eric Silver Becomes Majority Owner of Amalgamated, New York

http://adage.com/agencynews/article?article_id=145770

Eric Silver is trading in big-agency life to run a small, indie shop. The former top creative at Omnicom Group's DDB is taking a majority ownership stake in 34-person Amalgamated, New York, and will serve as its chief creative officer.

Until now, the three admen who set up Amalgamated in 2003 all had equal stakes in the shop. As part of the changes, co-founder and executive creative director Jason Gaboriau -- who plans to leave the agency to pursue a creative position at a larger shop -- has sold his stake to Mr. Silver. The two other co-founders, Director of Strategy Doug Cameron and CEO Charles Rosen, have also sold portions of their stakes to Mr. Silver, though both maintain minority interest and are remaining with the agency in their current titles.

Mr. Silver's move to Amalgamated reunites a team that worked together for five years at Cliff Freeman in the late 1990s, producing work for clients such as Mike's Hard Lemonade, Fox Sports and Budget Car Rental and other brands. "All of us spent quite a bit of time together at Cliff Freeman," said Amalgamated CEO Mr. Rosen. "Eric quit and 15 minutes later, Doug, Jason and I went into Cliff's office; the three of us left to go start a small agency and he left to take on big-agency opportunities. We all chose the thing we needed to choose at that time. In that seven or eight years, Doug and I learned what we'd need to do to take the agency to the next level to attract a certain calber of clients, and Eric became very, very ready to do his own thing, but it took him that journey to be ready to do that."

Mr. Silver has already contributed to bringing in a new client for Amalgamated; he helped lead a pitch for used car company CarMax in which it last week prevailed as the winner. That account is a boost for the shop, which earlier this year lost longtime client Mike's Hard Lemonade to Arnold, New York after a review. In addition to Carmax, the agency's current client roster includes Unilever's Ben & Jerry's brand, Coca-Cola Co., Qdoba Mexican Grill and MSG Networks.