A Drive for Five

Who says it’s a bad time to start an agency? The principals at Launch55 certainly don’t.

In fact, this trio of marketing veterans believes there’s no better time than the present, which is why they’ve formed a holding company to provide financial and intellectual assistance to start-up agencies.

“We want to help entrepreneurs think through their ideas and create a strategy for growth,” says principal Mickey Goodman, who formed Norwalk, CT-based Launch55 along with John Block and Tom Arrow. “There are a lot of very bright, talented people who don’t have experience starting a company. You can count on one hand the ones who really turned [their talents] into a sound business plan.”

Both Arrow and Block were executives of Market Growth Resources, the Wilton, CT-based agency Goodman founded in 1989 along with Wes Bray and Mickey Jardon. MGR was sold to True North Communications in 1998, and became the headquarters of Marketing Drive Worldwide when True North unified its various promotion agencies under that name two years later. (Goodman and Block departed Marketing Drive at the beginning of 2001 during a management restructuring; Arrow most recently was chief operating officer of Supermarkets Online.)

The Launch55 name explains the goal: help develop five new agencies in five years, both by identifying outside start-ups and launching businesses from within the company. But the principals hope to be working with 10 entities by the end of 2002. “I don’t think we believe we’ll have five out of five successes,” Goodman says.

Three businesses are already lined up for funding:

• CircleOne, Norwalk, the brainchild of three former Marketing Drive execs — Allison Burress, Michael Dill, and Mark Szuchman — who will provide full-service marketing planning for smaller, promotion-driven brands. The shop gained business from Boston-based Duracell before it even opened a formal office. (The trio worked on the account at Marketing Drive.)
• Convergence Marketing, Hanover, MD, a technology-focused company that intends to “deliver on the promise of customer marketing,” says principal Chris Miller, a veteran of MGR’s early days who left in 1994 to launch a merchandising company called Fieldflex. Miller’s partners are MGR alum Patti Morehouse and Supermarkets Online vet Jeff Burress. The company is also getting support from Jardon Marketing Services — a business started by one of MGR’s other founders (who also left Marketing Drive earlier this year).
• Blueblack, an in-house launch that will help consumer packaged goods makers leverage in-store technology.

“We’re not a venture capital firm, we’re a holding company,” says Goodman. “A lot of people have been using the roll-up model lately. But businesses don’t always naturally roll into each other.”

Launch55 is only looking for shops “with a well-defined niche,” says Goodman. “The world doesn’t need another promotion agency.”