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Max Burt is quitting as D’Arcy’s planning director to form a

company offering help to clients who want to go interactive.

The start-up will act as a strategic consultancy and creative

problem-solver to advertisers looking to use the internet and other

interactive channels more effectively.

Burt would not reveal the identities of those partnering him in the

venture or the ’significant investors’ who have agreed to back it.

But he said: ’It will be one of the first companies to apply top-end

business and branding brains from strong consultancy and marketing

backgrounds to the internet space.’

Burt, 34, has spent the last six months working on the concept, which

will aim to bring marketing expertise to an area currently dominated by

website designers and technology experts.

’There are lots of opportunities for planners like myself to bring their

skills into an area which currently lacks them,’ he added.

No leaving date has been set for Burt, a member of the management board

at D’Arcy, which he joined in August 1996 as its planning chief.

He began his agency career as a copywriter at the then Horner Collis &

Kirvan but switched to planning when he was hired by Abbott Mead Vickers

BBDO in 1989.

After a year-long interlude working on the Honda account at Butterfield

Day Devito Hockney, he returned to AMV as the board account planner

responsible for the agency’s BT business.

He was an author of BT’s Grand Prix-winning submission for the 1996 IPA

Effectiveness Awards.

Burt said: ’I’ll be sad to leave D’Arcy. The agency has come on in leaps

and bounds over the past two or three years and is strong both

strategically and creatively.’

Barry Cook, D’Arcy’s managing director, added: ’We have a strong and

senior department in which I have huge faith so there is no immediate

need to replace Max. I’m looking at his departure as an opportunity to

move on.’