Stuart Elliott of The New York Times spoke to MDC Partners CEO Miles Nadal, a man he calls “The Monty Hall of Madison Avenue.” He also spoke to some of the agency heads in bed with MDC.
“The really talented, creative people don’t like being told what to do,” said Jonathan Bond, co-chairman of Kirshenbaum Bond in New York, who with Richard Kirshenbaum sold 60 percent of the agency to Mr. Nadal in 2004.
“I don’t know if we’d be good in a corporate structure,” he added. “We’d probably get fired in a week, with good reason.”
In contrast, “MDC has been a good fit for us,” Mr. Bond said. “We just go do it till someone tells us not to — and no one ever has.”
Bond nicely brings this around, making his decision to sell part oh his agency to the Toronto-based conglomerate seem reasonable. But it’s that preceeding sentence that I linger on, for there lies the difference between an entrepreneur and a company man, a.k.a. worker bee.