There are two main reasons that most ad agencies shy away from investing in the start-ups they help promote: lack of money and lack of investment expertise. That’s apparently not stopping New York-based Anomaly. The indie agency, founded in 2004, has stakes in or is incubating six projects, including Eos, a shaving cream it launched with Target, and a mobile commerce app with ShopText.
Its latest investment is in YouTube hit Lauren Luke. Her how-to makeup videos have grown into the most popular YouTube channel in the U.K., and now Adweek reports that agency is helping her launch a cosmetics line. Anomaly also helped broker a book deal for Luke with U.K. publisher Hodder & Stoughton. I talked with co-founder Carl Johnson about why the agency is moving more heavily into the venture business, and how it plans to avoid the problems that have plagued even agencies with big bank accounts that have tried (and sometimes failed) at the investment game. (Witness WPP Spotrunner, or Publicis’ Honeyshed).
How big a stake do you take in these projects
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