How McKinney achieved one of the best new-business records among advertising agencies

Innovation and collaboration, two keys to ad agency new business.

McKinney is an independent advertising agency based in Durham, North Carolina. It was founded in 1969 by Charles “Chick” McKinney, the agency is now independently owned by a management team led by Brad Brinegar, CEO.  It has been recognized as one of the nine best agencies in the country by Advertising Age

In 2003, McKinney became one of the first agencies to pioneer connection planning, which determines the most innovative and creative ways of bringing brands and people together in mutually beneficial ways - ADWEEK

In that same year, McKinney hired a group of interactive experts and injected them into the agency’s existing disciplines. (Today, 35% of the agency’s revenue comes from interactive activities, and 88% of frontline staff is actively engaged in interactive work.) Brad Brinegar: Online Advertising

In 2006, McKinney combined its three strategic disciplines (account planning, connection planning and interactive strategy) into one strategic offering and named Andrew Delbridge, previously director of account planning, partner and chief strategy officer - The Cyber One Report 2006

Under Brad Brinegar’s leadership, Mckinney has achieved one of the best new-business records in the advertising agency industry by being collaborative and innovative.

Brad learned the meaning of collaboration as an oarsman on Dartmouth’s crew team: “It’s not intuitive, but a boat actually goes slower when one guy rows better than the rest. And there is no defense in rowing, no way of stopping the other team. So the only way to win is to be smarter, work harder, care more and pull together better than your opponents.”  McKinney’s website

How he has brought innovation and collaboration to McKinney: 

  1. “We designed our entire space, from the ground up, for collaboration.”
  2. “We invest twice the industry average in strategic resources, to make sure that our innovations are grounded in addressing the right business issues to create the results we want.”
  3. “We work in cross-disciplinary brand-teams, to increase the odds that different perspectives will lead to fresh insight.”
  4. “We bring in lots of outside speakers to teach new perspectives.”

Click on the following link to read Business Management Daily’s recent interview with Brad, “Distruptive Player a Game-Changer”

Filed Under: Agency Branding, Agency Leadership, New Business Talents, New Business Trends Tagged With: , , , , , , , , ,
About Michael Gass

Michael is an international new business consultant to advertising, digital, media and PR agencies. Since 2007, he has led in the use of social media and content marketing strategies to make agency new business EASIER.