MSQ: Built For The Now

The marketing services industry is undergoing a messy, accelerated reset. Brands are scrutinising partners for long-term value, boardroom relevance and measurable impact — just as traditional agency models strain under complexity, fragmentation and the realities of AI.

All around, big marketing services groups are restructuring, re-grouping and redefining their roles, while their clients are scrambling to transform their businesses to exploit new technology, changing geopolitical forces and shifting customer expectations.

In the midst of this change sits MSQ. Neither one of the world's biggest holding companies nor a small specialist boutique, MSQ finds itself at the frontier — big enough to fully participate in the revolution, yet nimble enough to avoid the distracting restructuring its competitors are currently going through.

As executive director of MSQ, Kate Howe is a key architect of MSQ's strategy for investing in technology, AI and specialist capabilities to meet the various critical needs emerging from marketers.

And where other groups are simplifying by stripping back, MSQ has taken a different route: handling scale and complexity without silos and pairing entrepreneurial agency talent with joined-up intelligence. The result is a model designed not to look “next”, but to work now.

The group includes established agency brands such as Big Spaceship, which it acquired last year, The Gate, Smarts Elmwood, Stein, Freemavens, The Forge, 26PMX, MSQ DX, Miri Growth, and Walk-In Media.

Howe discusses MSQ's Joined-Up Thinking operating model and its commitment to driving brand momentum across its client-base.

Creative Salon: How is MSQ as set up now to meet client needs in this era of seismic change?
Kate Howe: Client-centricity is in our DNA. It was part of the core concept of MSQ 15 years ago when we were formed and it’s baked into our culture through the talent we hire (senior leaders have to believe in it completely), our people being under one roof which simply makes collaboration easier, and over 150 of our senior global leaders having shares in our company. When creative, tech, media and data people all work together on a brief they sharpen each other’s thinking and this turns our Joined-up Thinking operating model into a business multiplier, creating brand momentum in each and every case.

So how do you ensure your specialist agencies collaborate without losing what makes them distinctive?
We are fiercely agency brand first. We believe in this ever-more complex world brands don’t need generalists, they need qualified experts collaborating together without silos. The need diverse teams who manage themselves rather than having to be co-ordinated. At MSQ our agency leaders believe in this and want to work this way. They have the freedoms to build and manage their agencies, invest in their own cultures and hire the very best talent for the roles. And then they come together around the bigger, more complex briefs to elevate each other and thus elevate the brand. Where the work goes the money flows so when we win as MSQ the agencies involved all win too.

AI is now table stakes. Where does it genuinely create advantage — and where is it over-claimed?
Every day we’re discovering more ways it can create advantage, yet I think we’re still early in the journey to understanding it’s true potential for our industry. Today it is table stakes at the admin and strategic and creative starter phases, and in some areas of production. But using it to create truly remarkable, beautiful, effective films, or threading it together to create end-to-end campaigns without human intervention, or to solve more complex technical issues such as keeping all your retail media assets bang up to date – well mostly we aren’t there yet. Will we get there? In some cases yes, but I don’t think we can under-estimate the need for talented humans in the mix, and anyone who fails to acknowledge that is probably over-claiming.

What does practical AI implementation look like when the goal is commercial momentum, not experimentation?
I was in a kick-off meeting for an agentic commerce brief today where the end-goal was very clearly commercial gains. In this instance our response will be a combination of our MSQ DX team, MSQ Intelligence team and Precious Media, our digital retail and commerce practice. Practical implementation means these people working together to understand the nuances of the brief, workshopping the solutions and laying down a costed roadmap for the client to achieve their aims. The AI and Data expertise is in the MSQ Intelligence and DX teams. Precious has all the client’s organisation and brand knowledge, and the digital retail expertise. Working together they have all the skills needed to respond to this brief.

How have brand expectations of agency partnerships changed in the last few years?
I think they’re in a state of accelerated evolution driven by the need to address the ever-increasing complexity of the landscape in holistic ways (1PD, always on content at scale for all platforms including retail media, reporting and ROI pressures, under-performing tech stacks, regulation, joined-up social and influencer marketing, sustainability). Technology is forcing media and creative back together. The need for relevance and personalisation in order to cut through is forcing smart use of data. Tech solutions are needed to make it all affordable and AI is accelerating this yet further.

So brands are increasingly turning to agency partners who can provide large amounts of the solutions they need in a silo-free, efficient way that’s also measurable to drive continuous improvement, and manageable for increasingly time-poor client teams.

They also want commercial partnership, whether that’s payment for outcomes or all content for a percentage of media spend, or any other methodology. The new landscape makes it very difficult to align around a commercial partnership if you work with multiple disparate agencies, your data is in lots of places and no-one has an overview of your technology.

What do clients really mean when they say they want simplicity?
I think they mean that they don’t want to have to manage complex configurations of agency teams who aren’t united around a single goal, who don’t respect each other’s points of view and who can’t offer true commercial partnership. Our 'Joined-up Thinking' operating model was designed specifically to solve for this. Given where we are today it was ahead of its time!

What will distinguish marketing and technology services groups that succeed from those that stall?

Probably the absolute recognition that their capabilities exist in service of each other as well as their clients. Expert teams who collaborate, making each other better and elevating each other as well as their client is a big idea. It’s a vision we hold dear at MSQ and have embedded into our culture.

What will distinguish marketing and technology services groups that succeed from those that stall?

Probably the absolute recognition that their capabilities exist in service of each other as well as their clients. Expert teams who collaborate, making each other better and elevating each other as well as their client is a big idea. It’s a vision we hold dear at MSQ and have embedded into our culture.

What should brand leaders be asking potential partners that they often don’t?

Some years ago at the IPA I was involved in developing a Relationship Charter which was about how the partnership will truly work in reality. The conversation can’t just be about SOWs and fees. It can’t just be about what work will get done, but how it gets done. Who works with who? Where are the AI efficiencies and specifically how does the money flow? How do we ensure everyone in the relationship wins and what efforts are parties prepared to go to, to ensure this partnership is a success?