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1576 buys Carnegie Worldwide to launch sponsorship & events division

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By The Drum Team, Editorial

October 20, 2005 | 2 min read

1576 has acquired Carnegie Worldwide in a deal that will see its managing director Fife Hyland become a director of the agency’s board and head of a new sponsorship and events division. The five-year old Carnegie Worldwide will cease trading.

Gary Smith, managing partner of 1576, said that the move to open a sponsorship and events division was part of bringing specialists into the agency.

“It’s one of those things that we’ve been aware of for some time,” he said. “We didn’t want to rush headlong into it. Carnegie Worldwide seemed like a really good fit, both culturally and in what we wanted to do as a company.”

Hyland led a management buyout of Carnegie Worldwide from Charlotte Ventures, part of Rangers’ owner David Murray’s the Murray Group, in July 2003.

“The Murray Group is not a big marketing group, so it’ll be good to have the support of the agency,” Hyland said. “We had two strong two years’ of trading after the MBO. The Murray Group opens a lot of doors, but it also closes a lot in the sports business. I want to do good work and have fun. I want to get to a position of worrying about clients’ work without having the stress of worrying about the business side of it.”

Martyn Wilson and Andy Mitchelmore, account director and account manager respectively at Carnegie’s, will also join 1576.

Carnegie’s most recent deal was with Whyte & Mackay and Hibernian. The deal - reported to be worth £1 million - came on the back of a similar sponsorship deal worth £3 million with Leeds United. It has also been involved with Bank of Scotland’s £4 million sponsorship portfolio, The Edinburgh Festival and The Scottish Commonwealth Games.

Smith said that clients were already expressing interest in the new division. “We always want to bring specialists into one place,” he said. “I’ll look at plugging Fife and the team into pitches as it gives us a lot of creative thinkers around the table.”

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