In the world of online adver­tis­ing agen­cies, Mar­ty Weiss is a true vet­er­an: a sea­soned exec­u­tive, design­er and art direc­tor, he’s mor­ph­ing his lat­est ven­ture (Meter Indus­tries) into a new agency based in New York called “Mar­ty Weiss and Friends.”

An art direc­tor with a vision

This is the kind of art direc­tor oth­er art direc­tors aspire to be: in addi­tion to Mar­ty Weiss and Friends, his work­places include Weis, Whit­ten, Car­roll, Stagliano; Chiat/Day; TBWA/Chiat/Day and Weiss, Stagliano & Part­ners.  So what’s with the new offering?

The clue’s in the title: Weiss aims to draw tal­ent from a core group of indus­try peo­ple he’s famil­iar with – friends – and bring them togeth­er in bespoke teams to work on each indi­vid­ual assign­ment or project. In oth­er words, he’ll be cre­at­ing case-by-case collaborators.

Weiss thinks the new offer­ing is more of an “ant-agency”, describ­ing his new firm as more of a “big hug­ging com­pa­ny” than a big hold­ing com­pa­ny. And he’s already assem­bled a glit­ter­ing list of col­lab­o­ra­tive friends, which now includes names from strong agen­cies such as Megan Kent (agency expe­ri­ence: Starfish, JWT, and Bouchez Kent), Jon Bond (agency expe­ri­ence: Big Fuel and Kir­shen­baum, Bond & Part­ners) and Lance Porigow (agency expe­ri­ence: Profero).

A new trend in Adland?

And the roster’s pret­ty impres­sive, too, with “friends” like Thinkers and Mak­ers, Ski­mat­ics Web Works and JSC Con­sumer Insights.  Megan Kent describes Weiss’s approach as the cre­ation of a “mer­ry band of all-stars” who have accrued abun­dant expe­ri­ence of online adver­tis­ing agencies.

This is actu­al­ly becom­ing a trend: as Jon Bond explained, Weiss’ new project reflects how much loos­er the adver­tis­ing busi­ness is becom­ing. He’s plan­ning to work with Weiss on entre­pre­neur­ial ven­tures, an area he’s accu­mu­lat­ed vast exper­tise in via his own firm, Tomor­row L.L.C.

The mod­el appears to be going down well with Weiss’s long­stand­ing clients, not least because he’s inspired their con­fi­dence: Chester Brands, CEO and Pres­i­dent of Impe­r­i­al Bran­des, said, “The key to the suc­cess of our cam­paign is real­ly Marty.”

He went on:

“Hav­ing worked with a num­ber of big agen­cies, what that proved to me is that you don’t need a big agency and a team of 40 peo­ple to get bril­liant creative.”