When Is Private Equity Right for You? The Key Bridges Creative Leaders Must Cross

For many founders, leaders and management teams in the marketing sector, growing their business feels like a personal mission. When you know the company you run inside out, it can be tempting to think that only you and your colleagues can understand what direction to head in next. But sometimes a sharp injection of external resources, expertise and – yes – cash, can be just what a business needs to cross into the next phase of growth.

Often, the right private equity partner can bring all of those. Bridgepoint Group’s Charles Welham has made it his career to see to that. As partner and sector head for business and financial services, London, he has watched as the group has invested in the marketing space for over 15 years.

In that time, Bridgepoint has backed two major trends in marketing services. “Firstly, the trend of digital. And secondly, new-world businesses versus old-world incumbents,” he says. “We look for digitally native businesses – created from the ground up with data and technology at the core – because we believe that’s where the better talent pool is, and that’s where you’ll get the acceleration through technology, artificial intelligence and machine learning.”

But with eight current investments across various parts of advertising and marketing services, it’s not just about the tech. “Every single one of them has been partnering with the founders, which I think is quite distinctive,” Charles notes, highlighting the tone of partnership that Bridgepoint favours. “Being a real partner to founders,” is always the focus. “We don't want to be operational experts that claim we know how to run these businesses. What we can bring is capital to grow,” he says. But his team also brings crucial expertise.

Whether it’s helping a business navigate its first merger or acquisition, guiding founders and leaders through a choice between opportunities in the market or integrating new functions into a company’s offering, the right private equity partner can help with navigation through, not just entry into, new areas.

With over $75 billion of assets under management and a strong local presence in Europe, North America and Asia, Bridgepoint can see the big picture. “This network of all the different companies does bring more in terms of talent network,” says Charles. “In terms of knowing what the right board setup looks like, knowing which are the big areas of the future in advertising.”

The ITG Case

One business which Bridgepoint has backed three times is Inspired Thinking Group (ITG), an AI‑enabled, agile content studio that helps global brands streamline and scale high‑quality creative. Andrew Swinand, CEO there underlines how the right private equity partner must include the right expert talent in multiple areas. “For small to medium businesses to afford an M&A team, capital team and digital innovation team – it becomes cost-prohibitive,” he says. “As part of the Bridgepoint family, you have access to these shared services – plus talent and best-of-breed capabilities – that allow you to leverage and access talent and capabilities that wouldn’t otherwise be available.”

But when is it time to start seeking out this kind of partnership? For Emma Watford, partner and head of sectors, London, business leaders need to look for three converging conditions:

• You're operating in a strategic growth market.
• You’ve got the talent to unlock that opportunity.
• A capital partner could unlock new avenues you can’t reach alone.

For Bridgepoint, when these three factors align, it signals that private equity can unlock transformative growth — as it did with ITG when they most recently sought backing. “What was really exciting about ITG was all of those three were there,” says Emma.

In the market, the need for content was exploding. “Brands need three times more social assets per month now than in 2020. In retail media, there’s been growth in that ad channel from $100 billion in 2023 to $140 billion in 2026. That’s the fastest growing channel,” she says. With briefs being sent offshore, back and forth, iterations was often slow and in dire need of streamlining. “ITG had created something really special,” she says. “It had spent tens of millions of pounds developing software itself to automate content production. It had done that for its own purposes, to serve its clients.”

About 18 months before Bridgepoint invested in ITG for the second time, it started trying to sell that independently to external parties. “What really impressed us was that it managed to sell it, in that short space of time, to 25 really blue-chip clients – from almost a standing start – which we thought was exceptionally impressive.” The quality and distinctiveness of the software product was “referenced fantastically,” as did its services. “It was described as a business that would jump over the highest hurdle to serve its clients,” says Emma. “All its clients were effusive about ITG, and we always take that really seriously.”

The avenues for growth were clear too. ITG was a UK-born, European-focused business. And with the largest ad market being the US, Bridgepoint believed it needed to access that market by setting up on the ground there.

The other opportunity Emma and her colleagues saw was to separate services and technology and run each under a separate P&L, bringing all the best practice of the technology business to the technology side.

“We saw those two – as well as growing the core in the way that it’s always done (this is a business that’s never not grown the top line in any year) – as the plan.”

The result Bridgepoint and ITG were aiming for together:

• Enter the US market and establish a local presence.
• Separate tech and services to unlock value on both sides.
• Grow EBITDA from £20 million to over £50 million.

“And this is where we were so lucky to find Andrew, who’s scaled many businesses in the space really successfully in the past,” Emma says. And that’s where the human element really enters the equation. “Having run Leo Burnett and Publicis Creative in the US, he decided to move all the way to the UK with his wife and dog to scale ITG globally, completely upheaving his life for this opportunity.”

Andrew has run nine startups and sold seven in his career. “Having done all of it myself. You just get buried. And as a CEO or founder, you're spending all your time doing nothing but fundraising capital. You take your eye off the ball. You stop paying attention to customers, you stop paying attention to the product and your business,” he admits. The right private equity partnership can free up a leader to stay focused. “Having just gone through an acquisition with Bridgepoint, I was allowed the time to focus on the things that matter – people, product, customers – because they are experts in so many aspects of growth,” he says. “They were able to support my team with excellence, with people who are best-of-breed in terms of executing against this. I can't understate how valuable that is in terms of allowing you to continue to grow without taking your eye off the ball.”

Structures that Enable True Partnership

The shape of a partnership between a marketing business and a private equity firm has to be right for the unique goals and characteristics of each deal, says Emma. “We don’t have a kind of template in terms of a deal structure. Sometimes leaders are looking to achieve different things for different reasons. And the most important thing to me is to really listen and understand what the individual is trying to achieve.”

Often, Bridgepoint would arrange bespoke solutions for different constituents in a single transaction that met all of their requirements and needs. “We're not someone who just rocks up with a manual,” she adds. “We understand the problem and try to craft a very specific solution and capital injection to resolve whatever that is. We don’t have a playbook. We have lots of expertise. We have our AI person, we have expertise in procurement, digital marketing, whatever you want. But we don’t say, ‘You have to use the spanner and the screwdriver and the hammer.’ We say, ‘We’ve got all these things – what do you need from our toolkit?’ And we’d be delighted to help you with your problem, whatever problem you have.”

How to Know It’s Right

“You hear nightmare stories of private equity taking over, sitting on you, managing you,” says Andrew. “For me, it’s wind at your back, not in your face.” For him, that’s 250 investment professionals backing and supporting ITG’s aims. “That’s the difference I’ve really experienced with Bridgepoint. It’s being supported versus restrained. And those are the things that help a business grow.”

Emma admits that businesses seeking backing are often wary of a bait and switch where investors say one thing and do another. “We would only invest when there’s full alignment on a strategy. We invest in interesting companies with alignment with the management team. I think that’s quite compelling for founders,” she says.

But how to know when that’s the case? “It’s quite hard to differentiate private equity firms from the outside. But if you speak to people who’ve worked with us, they would – hopefully – say that,” she concludes. “They’d also say that when we deal with people, we're not looking to extract the most based on the legal document. We’re trying to be people that others would want to give a good reference for later down the line – and want to partner with us again.”

Image credit: Modestas Urbonas on Unsplash