Butler Lutos Sutton Wilkinson is to merge with Cowan Kemsley Taylor
to create an agency with claimed billings of more than pounds 60
million.
The new agency will be named on 1 December, when it officially
launches.
It will be based at Butler Lutos’s redesigned offices in Marshall Street
in London’s Soho.
Matthew Lutos and Martin Butler, directors of Butler Lutos, will be the
joint chief executives of the new agency, with Rupert Sutton, the
creative director of Butler Lutos, becoming the creative partner. CKT’s
founders, Paul Cowan and Maggie Taylor, will become the managing
director and the planning partner respectively at the merged shop. There
will be two joint creative directors: Tim Johnson from CKT and Russell
Wailes from Butler Lutos.
The merger is unlikely to lead to any client fall-out.
Butler Lutos’s major clients include Somerfield, Mitsubishi Cars, the
Indian Tourist Office and Maples. CKT’s include Milupa, Belway Homes,
Greene King’s Wexford Ale and Britannia Building Society.
The merger talks, which began in July, were based on the shared belief
that changing client needs called for a different kind of agency. Butler
Lutos, in particular, felt it needed to develop its planning expertise
and raise its profile. The founders are aiming for their new agency to
make it into the top 20 within the next year.
Butler said: ’We are a big, successful group but we haven’t played the
advertising game. CKT has a higher profile than its size. It’s a
marriage made in heaven. ’
The two agencies, both privately owned, insist there will be no
redundancies as a result of the merger and that the merger was not
financially motivated.
’We are both making money so in that sense we didn’t need to do
anything,’ Butler said.
Cowan added: ’In terms of staff, we want more. We want to take our
growth forward. The essence of this new agency is our creative
thinking.’
Butler Lutos was formed in 1993 from a merger between Generator and
Connell May & Steavenson. CKT came into being in 1990, when eight top
executives broke away from Saatchi & Saatchi. Dogged by early legal
wranglings, the agency has never quite lived up to its potential.
