LONDON — Purple is no longer a stand-alone agency, but a shareholder in a newly formed collective of marketeers, creatives and strategists called Together Group, which will focus on the luxury and lifestyle sectors worldwide.
Purple is one of five founder-led companies to have sold “significant stakes” to Together Group, which pitches itself as a full-service design, tech, marketing and communications provider for multinational, regional and local clients.
An announcement is expected Wednesday.
Together Group was founded by Paul Sheehy, a creative-agency entrepreneur, and Brad Fry, managing partner of the venture firm MatCap. Christian Kurtzke is the CEO.
Kurtzke, formerly chief executive officer of Porsche Design and a principal at The Boston Consulting Group, said he wants to leverage Together’s “creativity, scale and reach” to incubate, transform and develop brands.
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In an interview, Kurtzke said he sees the group as much greater than the sum of its parts. The founder-led agencies are meant to work in tandem across the globe to provide the myriad services.
Other agencies that have joined the group include King & Partners, which is based in the U.S. and offers strategy, branding, creative, marketing and e-commerce services, and Noë & Associates, a design, content and production agency that focuses on architecture and design, and has offices in London and New York.
There is also Construct, a female-led creative consultancy, and Hot Pot China, which Together has acquired outright. Hot Pot is a digital-marketing specialist with offices in London and Shanghai, and its clients include Liberty, Fortnum & Mason, and La Perla.
The platform is set to expand further this year, adding agencies that have a particular focus on data and technology, content and activation.
Kurtzke said his aim is to have “synergistic agencies working in unison and delivering service excellence on a number of levels. Our model combines the benefits of leading-edge, founder-led agencies with the advantages of a larger, global organization.”
Asked why he’s chosen to work with Together, Kurtzke said he spent 25 years as a client, and while he enjoyed working with boutique, founder-led agencies, they often didn’t have the reach, or resources, he needed for a global business.
“I was always facing the same problem,” said Kurtzke, adding that Together will ideally “create an ecosystem of diverse, differentiated skills,” and that the company founders “will remain in the driver’s seat.”
He hopes the group will see itself as a big family, and be able to offer “long-term career paths” to younger employees, who in the past might have felt stunted working for smaller agencies with fewer opportunities.
Co-founder Sheehy described Together as “a new alternative for agency founders which outperforms the traditional trade-sale model, and which allows founders to remain in the driver seat.”
The five agencies have a combined 300 employees and 14 offices, and Kurtzke said they will retain their own identities, cultures and senior leadership teams. “Fully aligned as Together Group shareholders, they will drive collaboration across the group, providing more integrated, more creative solutions for our clients,” he said.
Fergus Lawlor, CEO of Purple, said “For us, it is not a means to an exit. We regard it as investment for Purple rather than a sale. We invested our agency into the group, and we are very excited to continue driving its growth. All the agency founders and their teams are committed to Together Group and its collaborative way of working for the long term.”