Octagon

Octagon has long been known as one of the top corporate consulting firms in the business and most of its 16 retainer clients, like Sprint, BMW and MasterCard, are longtime partners. It rarely loses clients or senior talent.

With that in mind, President and CEO Rick Dudley had to be satisfied late in 2006 when he got a call from Ray Bednar, Bank of America senior vice president and global sponsorship executive, to say the bank wanted its old agency back. An August 2005 consolidation by Bank of America had put all of the bank’s marketing assignments under the aegis of Omnicom firms.

“Clients that leave and come back are in many ways the biggest testimony to any agency, and we’ve had some of those on the athlete side [Herm Edwards and Brian Billick were two] along with the bank,” Dudley said.

There were other big wins for Octagon last year, including Johnson & Johnson for its Listerine and Pepcid brands; Kodak for the PGA Tour and NASCAR; an intriguing assignment from Coke to analyze its sports sponsorship portfolio and suggest additional opportunities and activation; and consolidation of longtime client MasterCard that brought the payment card’s NFL business in house.

By the agency’s own reckoning, it manages $3 billion in sponsorship investment and activation around the world. With the marketing world focusing on China for the 2008 Olympics and beyond, Octagon already has 150 employees there. The company also has made gains in Europe and South Africa, where competitors are setting up camp in advance of the 2010 World Cup.

Dudley said 2007 was the fifth consecutive year of double-digit growth for Octagon, with gross revenue up nearly 16 percent. Marketing North America revenue increased more than 10 percent while revenue for the athletes and personalities division, which has more than 500 clients, rose more than 21 percent.

Octagon launched two new in-house efforts in 2007: id8 (an idea generation unit), and the Octagon Advertising agency.