MSQ Acquires Insights-Driven Strategy and Innovation Consultancy The Forge

​MSQ, the next generation independent creative, technology and media company, has acquired the award-winning insights-driven strategy and innovation consultancy, The Forge.

The Forge, which operates a director-only colleague model, brings big thinking and sector experience to clarify, provoke and inspire innovation for global clients across healthcare and consumer products, retail, fashion, entertainment and finance. Key clients of the agency, founded in 2013 and led by Steven Melford (managing director), Simon Garnett, Karl Miley, Lee Manning Craik, Kirsty Yeomans and Daniel Quinn, include Unilever, Haleon, Perfetti. Annual revenues are around £4m.

MSQ sees The Forge as a powerful and complementary addition to the fold, with the strategic insight skills of The Forge and the dynamic, digital-first approach to insight and strategy of MSQ agency Freemavens creating a compelling client offering harnessing strategy and social science.

Access to MSQ’s data-driven technology and tools will supercharge The Forge’s client strategies and MSQ’s broader creative, design, digital and media expertise will enable client conversations to go beyond strategy and into activation. By harnessing The Forge’s skills, MSQ can unlock innovation potential for its clients and for its own growth, identifying and exploiting category and market opportunities.

With 90% of The Forge’s scope being multi-market, MSQ’s footprint and ambition to build multi-disciplinary hubs of scale in Europe, the US and Asia, bring expansion opportunities for The Forge, particularly in Amsterdam (where it currently has Director presence) and the US, where existing clients are based.

Peter Reid, group CEO of MSQ, said, “The Forge is a brilliant addition to MSQ – the team brings greater depth and breadth to our strategic thinking, unlocks innovation growth opportunities for our clients and provides an opportunity for us to extend the scope of The Forge’s work beyond strategy and into activation harnessing our broader skills particularly in creative, design and digital.”

Steven Melford, co-founder and managing director of The Forge, said, “We’ve had a number of approaches over the years. Any growth partner had to ultimately fit our key criteria of being good people, with a strong cultural fit, a stimulating vision and a platform that would provide growth opportunities for our business, our clients and our team.

“MSQ ticks all the boxes and importantly has a strong track record of allowing entrepreneurial agencies to thrive under its ownership.The increased scope of MSQ’s services, our ability to bring something different to that offering and the global footprint it brings to us is hugely exciting as we collaborate with our new colleagues to see what opportunities we can unlock.

“It’s business as usual at The Forge but supercharged with a bright future ahead.”

The Forge’s leadership team will work closely with MSQ executive director and former CEO of Kantar Consulting, Bart Michels.

Bart said, “By harnessing the strategic insight skills of The Forge with the dynamic, digital first approach to insight and strategy of Freemavens we can dig deeper and go further for our clients to unpick categories, markets and consumer opportunities.I look forward to working closely with Steven, Simon and the wider team as we explore the significant possibilities ahead.”

MSQ acquired Germany’s leading digital experience agency, UDG, in November last year and leading New York creative agency SPCSHP last October.