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“If You Don’t Disrupt Your Own Business Someone Else Will” LBB Editorial New York USA

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Little Black Book, As You & Mr Jones rebrands to The Brandtech Group after a bumper two years, founder David Jones chats to Laura Swinton about what’s behind the marketing group-cum-VC fund’s success and how he’s helping clients navigate the Web 3 - metaverse, AI, NFTs and all

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“If You Don’t Disrupt Your Own Business, Someone Else Will” | LBBOnlineEDITION →Global • USA • UK • AUNZ • CANADA • IRELAND • FRANCE • GERMANY • ASIA • EUROPE • LATAM • MEA Edition : InternationalLanguage : English HOMENEWSCREATIVE LIBRARYIMMORTAL AWARDSMEMBER COMPANIESPEOPLEJOBSHow LBB WorksPlans & PricingEditorial ToolkitnewsNEWSCREATIVE LIBRARYIMMORTAL AWARDSMEMBER COMPANIESPEOPLEJOBSLogin or RegisterCompany Profiles in association withThe Immortal AwardsCompany Profiles“If You Don’t Disrupt Your Own Business, Someone Else Will”20/01/2022LBB Editorial PublicationLondon, UK2.0kLIKEADD TO COLLECTION20/01/2022ShareAs You & Mr Jones rebrands to The Brandtech Group after a bumper two years, founder David Jones chats to Laura Swinton about what’s behind the marketing group-cum-VC fund’s success and how he’s helping clients navigate the Web 3 - metaverse, AI, NFTs and all“I promise you, on my first day in advertising, there was a copywriter bemoaning the end of kerning in typesetting - which is where you’d literally decide, manually, how to space the letters. I just remember going, this machine’s going to be better, you know? I think it’s funny how humans are not great at learning the lessons of history. It’s like it in every sector - technology just makes things much better and more efficient…. Oh, but of course it couldn’t possibly when it comes to the creative person. Because I’m special and unique.”As long as David Jones has been in the advertising world, the tension between the ‘way things have always been done’ and the promise of technology and disruption has always loomed. From day one to the heady heights of CEO of Havas, where he found some of his efforts to get the network ready for the future (such as the acquisition of crowdsourcing Victor & Spoils) undermined by people working against it. Rather than hang around for more of the same, David swapped advertising for brandtech - a phrase he coined (and trademarked) for the practice of helping businesses market their brands more effectively and efficiently using technology. In 2015 he raised $350 million and he founded You & Mr Jones, with a clever intertwining strategy of acquiring businesses in the fastest-growing areas of marketing (for example, in-housing specialists OLIVER, digital innovation company Gravity Road, data specialists like 55 and Brazil’s DP6) and investing in pioneering technology companies.It’s been a model that’s paid off and the past two years have seen the group’s growth trajectory go vertical. Its revenues in 2021 exceeded $500m and by the third quarter of 2021, its organic revenue growth on the year to date was over 50%. David has two almost opposite reactions to the boom of the past two years. “It’s funny because 50% of my reaction is: ‘well of course, because that’s exactly why I set the business up and it’s not a surprise at all that it’s doing so well. And 50% of my reaction is: ‘oh my gosh, it’s crazy!’.”David describes what he calls a ‘tectonic shift’, one that was rumbling along before he left Havas and was causing clients frustration - and which has, since the Covid-19 pandemic struck, erupted as a full-on volcanic explosion. But for clients navigating the rush to ecommerce, the increasing complexity of data, the possibilities of Web 3, there are few places to turn to find expertise in both brand marketing and tech, and where one can have privileged access to tech brands without bias.“[Clients were saying] We go see the agencies, they are great at brand and advertising but they don’t get tech and they don’t want to because it will totally disrupt their business model.Since we launched that has obviously now happened. We go to the tech platforms and they have great tech platforms… but they’re never going to be objective. Each tech platform will only recommend their tech platform. We don’t have the expertise and branding. What we need is somebody who is an expert in both branding and technology. And that’s what I called it. I called the company You & Mr. Jones at launch but I described it as a brandtech group.”That ‘brandtech’ descriptor has now become the business’ name - this month, they have rebranded as The Brandtech Group. It’s a name that perfectly encapsulates what they do - and hints towards David’s belief that the future of building businesses and brands doesn’t lie in advertising as we know it. “What we were setting out to do back then was to help clients do their marketing better, faster and cheaper using technology and [we had a ] fundamental belief that advertising would become a less and less relevant way of connecting brands and people, hence we didn’t call it ‘ad tech’ or ‘martech’, we called it ‘brand tech’. And I think that vision has just completely played out. It’s pretty crazy if you look at what has happened over such a short space of time.”One fascinating aspect of the business model is the venture capitalism component. All in all, The Brandtech Group has made 34 investments in 23 companie

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