Attention founder Curtis Hougland explains on his firm’s blog why MDC Partners–the holding company that owns Crispin Porter & Bogusky and many other fine agencies–decided to invest in his growing Word-of-Mouth concern.
…we are at an inflection point in social media, the shift from early adopter to early majority, a horizontal skill set requiring more and more vertical market expertise. Our appetite for data is voracious; the role of technology in marketing is exploding; our clients are smarter; we require talent equally skilled in data and conversation; and we found a partner who respects our idiosyncratic identity, our DNA. Unlike most potential partners, they respect our entrepreneurship, and won’t, one day, wake-up and join us with an advertising agency. They get it.
The MDC-issued press release emphasizes that Attention excels at integrating social media across all aspects of its clients’ businesses. And Forrester estimates social media marketing will grow at an annual rate of 34 percent over the next five years – faster than any other form of online marketing and double the average growth rate of 17 percent for all online mediums. With numbers like that, it’s easy to see why holding companies are at the ready with their checkbooks open wide.