Ad Veteran’s New Venture Relies on His Friends

A longtime advertising agency executive, art director and designer is looking to his “friends” for a little help with his new venture.

The executive is Marty Weiss, who is changing his most recent offering, Meter Industries, a brand design and marketing consultancy in New York, into what he is calling Marty Weiss and Friends. The new agency joins a list of Mr. Weiss’s workplaces that also includes Chiat/Day; Weiss, Whitten, Carroll, Stagliano; Weiss Stagliano Partners; and TBWA/Chiat/Day.

The “Friends” in the name is intended to suggest the agency’s model, which is becoming an increasingly familiar one in the advertising business; other examples include Co Collective. Mr. Weiss plans to assemble an appropriate team for each project or assignment from a core group of industry people he knows and firms he has worked with â€" they will become his case-by-case collaborators.

“I’m not even sure ‘agency’ is the right word,” Mr. Weiss said, “because it’s a bit of an anti-agency.”

Mr. Weiss is promoting his new venture with a campaign in social media, which includes declarations like this one: “We’re not a big holding company. We’re a big hugging company.”

One ad advising that “Meter Industries is now Marty Weiss and Friends” offers a cheeky explanation for the name change: “My therapist suggested I put myself more front and center.”

Among the collaborators on Mr. Weiss’s list are Jon Bond, of agencies like Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners and Big Fuel; Megan Kent, of agencies that include Bouchez, Kent, JWT and Starfish; and Lance Porigow, of agencies like Profero. The roster of “friends” also includes JSC Consumer Insights, Skimatics Web Works and Thinkers and Makers.

“What Marty is doing is not unusual right now,” Ms. Kent said, because many people who used to work for well-known agencies “have developed such a network of associates that it’s easy to reach out to the best in breed” and form what she described as “merry bands of all-stars.”

There are other factors fueling the trend, she said, as some people on Madison Avenue “don’t want to work for The Man anymore” and others consider themselves to be “more interested in the ideas than the office politics.”

Mr. Bond said the formation of Marty Weiss and Friends was another example of how much looser the business is now than it used to be.

In fact, when asked what his appearance on Mr. Weiss’s roster means, Mr. Bond replied, laughing, “I guess it means if something comes up we can both work on, he’ll call me.”

Mr. Bond said he would work with Mr. Weiss on entrepreneurial ventures in the spirit of Mr. Bond’s own company, Tomorrow L.L.C., which takes stakes in agencies, media companies and other firms. “Don’t be telling people I’m going to work on their advertising,” Mr. Bond said.

A longtime client of Mr. Weiss’s said he approved of the new venture.

“The key to the success of our campaign is really Marty,” said Chester Brandes, president and chief executive of Imperial Brands, for whom Mr. Weiss created a campaign for Sobieski vodka that carries the theme “The truth about vodka.”

“Having worked with a number of big agencies, what that proved to me is that you don’t need a big agency and a team of 40 people to get brilliant creative,” Mr. Brandes said.