The new agency, which is based in New York, is known as Another Anomaly. Bird is setting the business up with Natasha Jakubowski, who joins from Redscout, a New York branding consultancy. Founding clients include Coca-Cola, the Association of National Advertisers, and a new skincare range the agency is developing, which it will own a 40% stake in.
The first Anomaly office launched in 2004, co-founded by Carl Johnson, who was chief operating officer at TBWA\Worldwide, and Johnny Vulkan, former TBWA\ group creative director.
It launched with a design brief for the Coca-Cola water brand Dasani, but now works on a range of branding disciplines -- sometimes starting as early as creating a brand concept for a client or developing its own intellectual property, which it licenses to clients for a share of fees.
Johnson said that the idea of opening a second agency was to increase the Anomaly "bandwidth", with a separate entity carrying the added advantage of allowing them to bring in senior partners rather than just adding more people and building a big agency.
Johnson told Brand Republic: "We've declined 40 pitches, and we're getting a stream of entrepreneurial ideas most of which we are turning down...This gives us more partners to say 'do you fancy this? Do we fancy this?'"
He described Anomaly and Another Anomaly as "one brand, two flavours".
Earlier this year, 北京赛车pk10 magazine revealed that Anomaly was plotting the launch of a London office, with Johnson saying: "We are looking seriously at London by year-end, providing we can find the right talent here."
He said today that the timing was still on track.
Bird joined Sony in February 2006, taking on the new role of vice-president of brand partnerships. Prior to that, he was founder and managing director of Soul Advertising, but he left the agency when it was bought by Nitro in 2005.
Before launching Soul in 2000, Bird was group business director at Bartle Bogle Hegarty.
Bird was also one of the creators of a 'Keepy Uppy' game, along with his fellow Soul founders, which became a bestseller around Christmas 2003.