Blackwood Seven, a new unconventional media agency, announced plans to expand into the UK in a statement on Wednesday.
Having launched in Denmark only three years ago, the start-up has already successfully expanded into Germany and, in June this year, the United States. The business announced that it has successfully raised €13.5 million for a further expansion of their US operations, and is now hoping to to start competing with traditional media agencies in the UK as well.
Carl Erik Kjærsgaard, chief executive and co-founder of the Danish start-up, stated:
“We are looking at the UK and will come back in the autumn with a launch date for when we’ll start in London.”
“Before we go into any market we actually go out and talk to all the big media owners and tell them who we are and what the software does so that they know what to expect from us and how our business model works. We say our business model will always ensure that your model will always get fair share; so radio, TV or print gets fair share, since we use maths to work out that fair distribution between the media groups.”
The group hopes that Britain will provide another willing market for their unconventional approach, connecting advertisers with media outlets.
According to the Paying for Advertisement report from the ISBA and Arc, more than half of British media agency clients currently believe that their agency is making additional revenues from their accounts.
Blackwood Seven aims to be different.
Their model is based on an artificial intelligence supported software, which helps advertisers figure out how much they want to spend on advertisement, based on their own company’s sales data and a wider web of data the program collects from sources such as YouGov and Nielsen. The software allows to make an informed and efficient decision on advertisement spending and is easily accessible through the client’s smartphone.
Blackwood Seven does not operate on commission but a fixed monthly fee instead, further eliminating the possibility to sell more advertisement spaces than effective to the client to simply boost revenues.
The launch date for the UK has yet to be specified, but looking ahead, the agency is likely to make some waves in the UK advertisement business.
Katharina Fleiner 31/08/2016