White Horse Capital announces the launch of Communication Partners UK (CPUK) to fill a recognisable gap in the UK’s current media planning and buying landscape. The launch partners – Roy Jeans (Chairman), Rachel Hall (Commercial Director), and Ian Merricks (Investment Director for White Horse Capital) – all bring industry-acknowledged skills to a sector that has failed to keep pace with the overall dynamism of the UK economy.
Based on Borough High Street, CPUK will focus on clients who need senior hands-on media advice; will help advertisers who are in many cases relatively new to the market; and will comprehensively guide this new type of advertiser over the many media hurdles– quite often entrepreneurs with an enhanced eye on the bottom line. As a result CPUK will be focused on client profitability and how the media mix can help achieve this.
The media landscape has never been more complex or changeable. CPUK will help clients navigate their way through a marketplace that is both difficult to access and to understand. Having spoken to many advertisers over the past few months, we have identified a genuine need for an agency that can provide this personal, mature service. In many areas the consumer is moving faster than the advertisers trying to reach them – our challenge is to solve this.
The three launch partners all bring complementary and different skill-sets to CPUK:
Roy Jeans – Chairman
Roy has successfully run a number of key agencies during his career – including being GM of Zenith, as well as MD of Initiative, which he took from 12th to 4th in the UK while in charge. Latterly Roy was Global CEO of rapport, IPG’s successful OOH planning and buying company. Roy is an expert in the radio, press and OOH space. He has won Media Mind while at Zenith, and was appointed a Fellow of the IPA in 2007 for co-creating the IPA’s first online media training programme. In his career he has run accounts including Sky and Samsung, and ran Unilever’s buying across Europe for three years when at Initiative. He now owns and runs Grey Scorpion, an investment vehicle focusing on the media sector. In the past year he has invested in seven companies, including CPUK.
Rachel Hall – Commercial Director
Rachel has extensive media experience from her career at Zenith, where her most recent role was Media Director. She headed up some of the biggest and most demanding press accounts in the industry – including BT and L’Oreal. She also ran the regional and radio departments at Zenith. Rachel has worked on a range of award winning campaigns across most key sectors and has sat on both the RAB and ABC industry committees. She is an expert in the print, radio and online channels. Rachel has outstanding contacts across the entire media industry.
Ian Merricks – Investment Director
Ian has experience of running local and national radio stations, publishing companies and numerous digital businesses. He has achieved three trade sales of his investment-backed media companies over an 11 year period. He now runs White Horse Capital – a tech and digital media investment vehicle. He chairs an early stage high-growth company development programme with equity stakes in 100+ tech start-ups. Ian is an expert in print, television, digital and the TMT sector generally, and is a well-known commentator on the rapidly developing digital media scene.
At launch, Communication Partners is also partnering with ASTP – the successful specialist digital agency – run by Alex Packham, former Social Media Lead at Sky and ODEON Cinemas. “We wanted to partner a digitally-focused company with the same ethos as us – with an entrepreneurial approach that sits at the heart of business and media planning” said Rachel Hall, CPUK’s Commercial Director.
Alex Packham, ASTP CEO said: “ We are delighted to partner CPUK. They have a clear vision of what they want to do and how they’re going to do it. We will be able to help them maximise their clients’ profitability”.
CPUK starts with Outsourcery and the Malaysian Government as founder advertisers, and over the next few weeks CPUK will be announcing a number of other clients.