In the advertising business, as in certain romantic arrangements, what begins with great enthusiasm does not always end with a golden anniversary.
Gian Carlo Lanfranco and Rolando Cordova, the founders of the agency L&C, have purchased back the stake held by Serviceplan Group, the Munich-based holding company that acquired a position in their shop just three years ago. The transaction returns L&C to full founder ownership, a status it last enjoyed in 2022.
The buyback is the latest entry in a long tradition of agency founders who sell to larger networks, discover that the marriage is not quite what the courtship promised, and quietly arrange for an annulment. (The tradition is so well established that it might reasonably be added to the standard curriculum at portfolio schools, alongside kerning and the proper use of white space.)
Serviceplan, which bills itself as Europe's largest independent agency group, had presumably seen in L&C the sort of creative reputation that holding companies find attractive when they are assembling capabilities across borders. What the founders saw in Serviceplan — capital, infrastructure, access to a broader client roster — is similarly not difficult to imagine.
What changed in the intervening thirty-six months was not disclosed. Neither party offered extensive comment on the terms of the repurchase or the circumstances that led to it, which is customary in such situations. In the advertising industry, as in diplomacy, the less said about a parting, the more there usually is to say.
Mr. Lanfranco and Mr. Cordova now rejoin the ranks of founders who have reclaimed their agencies from network ownership, a cohort that has grown modestly in recent years as the economics of holding company life have become less appealing to certain principals.
Whether independence will prove more durable this time remains, of course, entirely up to them.
Original story published in adage.com: "L&C buys itself back from Serviceplan Group after three years - Ad Age"