Former Digitas Leader Turns Agency Model Inside/Out

CHICAGO, Oct. 19, 2016 /PRNewswire/ --  A force for change in the marketing industry and former worldwide leader of creative and strategy at Digitas, Mark Beeching and his CORE of risk-taking entrepreneurs have launched something very, very different -- even by Mark's non-conformist standards.

Blinding Glimpse of the Obvious (BGO) thinks, works, and makes money unlike an agency. It's been set up in every way possible not to push marketing at CMOs. Not adding to the noise, confusion, and cost of an increasingly messy agency marketplace.

An Inside/Out Agency
BGO works inside/out with brands. Beeching and his small team shape, buy, and orchestrate marketing from inside client operations. Free from strictures of legacy agency business models, cost structures, or turf wars.

"This isn't about selling brands more options," Beeching said. "It's about helping them filter through the noise and understand what moves the needle. What to do. What not to do. How to do it. It's about ideas and execution freed from old agency bias and burdens."

Stephanie Sarofian, another previous Digitas executive, and key player in BGO's CORE adds, "It's already a badly confused agency landscape for clients. It's a buyer's market. Why add to the problem and noise? Brands don't need more new approaches to marketing, but a new approach to the agency."

Follow The Money
Underpinning BGO's inside/out model is a different approach to how agencies make money. BGO's financial brain Aaron Webber puts it categorically, "Agency change is smoke and mirrors or short-lived at best if you don't fundamentally change finances too." BGO frees its thinking and operations from bias and self-interest by embracing shared risk and reward in a variety of ways – from bold performance-based remuneration right through to joint ventures with shared or full-risk ownership and funding by BGO.

"We don't hide behind the façade of ad spends, mark-ups, and billable hours. We want to pull back the veil and get to work," said Ron Gibori, head of strategy. "We're very much an agency off record, of the collaborative economy, not agency zero-sum games, and freed up by our business/operating model to stay brilliantly small, transparent, and do what we believe in for clients, not push what we do."  

Replenishing the Talent Pool
"BGO plans on cheating," said Beeching. "On our clients' behalf."

BGO believes the marketing talent pool needs outside radical replenishing. THE BGO COLLECTIVE is a constantly evolving network of thought leaders and ground-breaking individuals injected into projects. They come from fields outside of marketing and include civil engineers, hackers, criminal psychologists and more.  

"It's how we question the question and challenge received wisdom to open up new territories and pivot our perspectives," said Beeching.

"That's where our name came from," added Webber. "All the really smart, valuable ideas are the obvious ideas. Once pointed out. As individuals and an industry, we are all too often blinded by bias, business as usual, and old money models."  

Learn more at www.theobviousurl.com.  

Media Contact
Lindsey Wagner
[email protected]
312.610.9600

SOURCE Madison Wall