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The Marketing Group appoints first CEO

Adam GrahamThe Marketing Group, a Singapore-based collection of small agencies that floated in June this year, has appointed its first CEO to find synergies across the group.

Joining the company as CEO and executive is Adam Graham, former CEO of London digital agency Weapon 7 and MD of Saint, the digital arm of Rainey Kelly Campbell Roalfe/Y&R.

In a statement, Jeremy Harbour, The Marketing Group’s chairman, said Graham’s “experience building and managing digital agencies, together with his industry knowledge and relationships, will be immensely valuable to The Marketing Group.”

One of Graham’s duties will be to bring more companies into The Marketing Group fold. Asia-based companies to have joined include LinkedIn specialist Black Marketing and, more recently, ad agency Addiction Advertising.

His appointment will be one of few appointments made to work across the group’s member companies. In an interview with Mumbrella, TMG’s president Callum Laing noted that “There is no central team very deliberately.”

“Invariably what you find with the centralised model is that companies are acquired and try and force through the synergies, and you consolidate finance and sales, etc. And you end up with an accountant trying to tell entrepreneurs how to run their business,” he told Mumbrella.

“To be fair, Martin Sorrell is an accountant who’s done very well with that model. But what happens with small businesses is that the entrepreneurs leave pretty quickly. Entrepreneurs make terrible employees,” he said.

Commenting on his own appointment, Graham said: “I now look forward to supporting the Group’s continuing growth through our ambitious acquisition strategy of adding mature, profitable, debt-free businesses that build shareholder value and deliver outstanding results for our clients.”

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