“Design is at the Head of the Table”

MDC Partners, the growing Toronto-based advertising agency, has announced it will purchase a majority stake in Bruce Mau Design (Toronto), a store design and architecture firm.

Mau Design is named after its founder, who has collaborated with the likes of Frank Gehry and Rem Koolhaas. The firm specializes in store layouts, signage, packaging and logos.

Since January, MDC has bought interests in a half-dozen advertising agencies, including Cliff Freeman & Partners, Henderson Bas, Kirshenbaum Bond & Partners and Mono.

MDC chairman and ceo Miles Nadal said that Mau Design would become the core of a design specialty for his agency company, which is seeking to compete against its larger rivals by promoting its offerings as fresher and more creatively focused. “Design is becoming exceedingly important in the media mix,” Nadal said, “and we think there’s a huge strategic value to offering that service to clients.” That is particularly true, he added, as “the retail environment makes more of an impact” on sales than previously.

Services besides traditional advertising bring “a different sensibility to a brand that enhances the brand’s presence,” said MDC chief strategist Chuck Porter, who is also chairman of Crispin Porter & Bogusky (Miami), one of the most prominent MDC agencies.

“Design is setting the tone for all other communication to happen,” said Mau, who will continue as chairman of Mau Design. “A friend of mine who works in the agency business said that 20 years ago, design was not meeting with the ceo. But today, design is at the head table.

“We think of design as objects and spaces,” he added, “but more and more, we live inside a design environment and have developed the capacity to design our lives.”

Mau’s clients have included Indigo Books and Music, the largest Canadian book retailer; the Museum of Modern Art in New York, for graphics for the redesigned building that is to reopen in the fall; showrooms and sales brochures for the furniture maker Knoll; Koolhaas for the book “S, M, L, XL”; and Gehry for graphics for the Walt Disney Concert Hall in Los Angeles.