Simon Francis Starts New Consultancy

The former Aegis Media EMEA chief executive Simon Francis has launched a new marketing and effectiveness consultancy called Flock Associates.

 

Based on Regent Street, London, Flock Associates opens for business with drinks giant Diageo as its founding client. Flock Associates has won the Diageo work without a pitch and will be working with the company's Marketing Innovation team to help drive integration.

 

The new consultancy, which has been designed to help advertisers better integrate their marketing communication plans, and deliver a better return on their marketing investment, will be independently funded.

 

Flock Associates has made two board appointments. The director of digital products, News International, Nick Bell and Henriette Kistrup, senior director operational excellence at Arla Foods, will serve as non-executive directors. Katarina Nielsen, previously a marketer with Aston Martin and Dorchester Collection, joins Francis as a consultant.

  

"I am delighted to be launching a new offering for clients. Flock will help clients optimise their marketing ecosystems, by integrating their resources, and bring them greater marketing effectiveness and efficiency," says Francis.

 

He adds that companies know consumers respond best to carefully integrated marketing plans, but are finding integrating their resources and plans increasingly difficult. Flock Associates carried out a survey recently of 46 of the world's top marketers about marketing integration and effectiveness, with some interesting results:

- Over 70% think they could gain more than a 10% increase in effectiveness through better integration.

- A staggering 32% thought they would get a 20% or more increase in marketing ROI if their solutions were better integrated.

- 64% think their agencies are poor at working together for production efficiency

- And, a whopping 1 in 4 say they don't know which pieces of their marketing plans are working.

 

"Flock Associates - the integration and effectiveness consultancy - looks to serve multi-national and multi-brand advertisers who have complicated marketing plans that they know could be better integrated, and should yield significantly better Return On Marketing Investment," adds Francis.

 

The former chief executive of Aegis Media across Europe, Middle East and Africa (EMEA) left the company last summer.

 

Starting his ad career at Leo Burnett, Francis has a rounded CV that includes time at Saatchi & Saatchi and OMD. Francis joined Aegis Media in February 2011 from his position as chief executive for the EMEA region at Saatchi & Saatchi. Prior to joining Saatchi & Saatchi, Francis was EMEA managing director at media agency OMD, a post he held for six years in a career spanned a total of eight years at the Omnicom agency. His previous roles include strategic planning director at Mindshare UK.