Greg Grimmer is very keen for his profile shot to capture other people besides himself - he wants to showcase his new workplace as a hive of activity. "Could you get some of the agency in maybe, and people working behind me?"
It is a telling request from a man who has gone from being the energetic head of Publicis agency Zed Media to one of four equity partners in independent agency Hurrell Moseley Dawson & Grimmer.
Day five, and he is already feeling the effects of being part of a management team, rather than the ultimate decision maker.
"As anyone at Zed would tell you, we ran pitches one way: my way," he says. "Here, there are a number of leaders. You put across a point of view and listen to the response." Not that Grimmer has any regrets about walking away from Zed when he did.
He left the agency, he explains, in the rudest of health, with two bright young successors in place and a renewed hold on the BT digital media account, which Zed first wrested from I-Level in 2006, in no small part thanks to Grimmer.
In three years, he more than doubled billings, bringing in the Capital One and Tiscali accounts, and oversaw the agency's growth from 40 to more than 120 staff.
"I could have done the next stage of growth very happily," he says, but decided to "leave on the up, so that I carry on going up".
Ebullience and ambition
And Grimmer's latest challenge, to head Hurrell Moseley Dawson & Grimmer's media offering, will require all the ebullience and ambition that characterised his tenure at Zed.
It has also required considerable investment from all four partners. As he stresses: "There are no business angels or sleeping partners; everything is paid for by our overdrafts."
Grimmer himself has remortgaged his house to stump up the cash. His daughters, meanwhile, are apparently peeved at having to holiday in Dorset rather than Zanzibar.
Yet he is at the point where he can afford to take a financial risk. Moreover, he is prepared to stake his money, and reputation, on a model he believes will be copied by others, at the expense of the larger, established networks such as WPP.
HMDG's antecedent, Hurrell and Dawson, launched two years ago with the aim of providing advertising, media planning as well as media buying, under one roof.
The H is former M&C Saatchi Europe chairman Nick Hurrell; the M is Wieden & Kennedy's former creative director Al Moseley; and the D, former TBWA\London chairman Neil Dawson.
The model is not, Grimmer insists, a return to the "bad old days" of full service in the 1980s, when media got five minutes at the end of a meeting.
"It is not full service in that sense by a long distance," he asserts. Rather, it is centred on "full responsibility", with strategic planning at the heart and much of the expertise outsourced.
"We can source the right typographer, the right film director and shoot the commercial. Likewise, if a client says we want to buy press and posters, we can use whoever they want - but if Zed does the online buying and it goes wrong, the client will pick up the phone to me, not Zed, to sort it out."
In less than two years, the new-style agency has amassed a promising list of clients, including Auto Trader, IPC Media and the Red Cross. So what is it about the agency that is convincing major advertisers to shift ad spend out of firms such as JWT?
Marriage of love
Grimmer believes Hurrell Moseley Dawson & Grimmer has a number of key advantages. Firstly, it is under no pressure to outsource work to a sister agency, as if it were network-owned. "It is a marriage of love," explains Grimmer, "not an arranged marriage".
Secondly, the advent of free ad exchanges means that a smaller outfit can buy media at the same rates as a powerful buying shop such as OPera or GroupM.
"The emphasis is back again on media planning for individual clients rather than negotiation," says Grimmer.
After Zed's BT pitch in particular, which turned into a protracted, procurement-driven and bitterly fought contest, Grimmer is in no hurry to reprise his role as "head of HR and finance", with one eye on the numbers.
He wants to focus more on client issues and problem-solving, less on day-to-day operations.
And according to Grimmer, the smartest, most challenging planning looks at media and creative together, as opposed to a piecemeal approach. "In a sense, London is more tribal than ever, with search engine optimisation agencies and digital agencies and digital creative agencies. We're cutting through that," he says.
"We don't want to be a tribe - we're happy to be wandering nomads."
CV
2008: Equity partner, Hurrell Moseley Dawson & Grimmer
2005: Managing director, Zed Media
2003: Group commercial director, ZenithOptimedia
1999: Managing partner, Optimedia
1998: Freelance consultant, PHD
1991: Media planner, through to board director, CIA
1987: Media planner, Delaney Fletcher Slaymaker Delaney and Bozell.
Feature
Grimmer embarks on marriage of love
Greg Grimmer tells Isabella Piasecka why he decided to give up heading Zed Media to become an equity partner in a small independent agency and explains his ambitious vision for the future.
