ABOUT US

Game changing media planning

Our global planning and collaboration platform SOURCE combines playful gamification techniques with hard-core strategic principles to deliver innovation. It's not just a work tool, it's our business ecosystem.

Finding a better way

Welcome to PHD – we’re a global communications planning and media buying agency network delivering smart strategic thinking and creative innovation for the world’s leading brands.

Brilliant media thinking is in our DNA. A culture of thought-leadership, creativity and innovation has seen us grow from a challenger agency in the UK, to a global leader with over 4,000 employees in over 80 countries.

We combine the latest industry insight with the best creative minds to produce planning innovation and create award-winning work for some of the world’s largest advertisers.

Finding a better way is our ethos and sums up how we approach everything – from a new client brief to the way we work.

Part of a powerful family

Being part of Omnicom Media Group (OMG) gives us world-class purchasing power to meet the tough buying demands of the world’s biggest advertisers. Having access to sophisticated research resources and advanced business intelligence tools through the group allows us to deliver the very best strategic expertise.

This combination of buying clout and superior communications planning credentials means we offer clients a real alternative.

Our Story

PHD was founded in London in 1990 by David Pattison, Nick Horswell and Jonathan Durden; the ‘P’, the ‘H’ and the ‘D’.

Back then the industry was all about buying; as cheaply and as quickly as possible. But David, Nick and Jonathan believed that consumer insight and media behaviour was just as important. They saw a future where smart thinking and clever planning could help brands influence consumer behaviour more than ever before.

PHD, or Pattison-Horswell-Durden as it was known back then, became the agency that ‘thought before it bought’ and was quickly credited with inventing creative media.

In 2002 PHD – now part of Omnicom – opened its first offices outside of the UK and began to grow the international network.

The formation of PHD’s parent company, Omnicom Media Group, in 2005 meant that PHD’s buying was now powered by one of the world’s largest media holding companies. Clients could now benefit from PHD’s unique approach to media planning, without compromising on the buying.

The founding principles of thought-leadership, creativity and innovation have remained at the heart of the network and today PHD is a global network of 80+ offices still leading the way in the evolution of communications planning around the world.

SERVICES

Award winning media planning and buying

We deliver media planning and buying across all online and offline media. In addition we also offer a number of specialist services.

• Affiliate marketing
• Branded content
• Consumer insight & research
• Content creation
• Data analysis & modelling
• Direct response
• Econometrics, including forecasting & ROI analysis
• Ethnic media consultancy
• Events & Experiential
• International media planning, buying & campaign management
• Media barter consultancy
• Mobile marketing
• PPC
• Programmatic media buying
• SEO
• Social marketing consultancy & implementation
• Sponsorship negotiation & implementation
• Sports Marketing

Media planning redefined

Our global planning and collaboration platform SOURCE combines playful gamification techniques with hard-core strategic principles to deliver innovation. It’s not just a work tool, it’s our business ecosystem.

We believe that growth will come from increasing brain power, not just buying power. And we’ve proved that innovation and media creativity drives disproportionate return on investment for brands.

SOURCE provides the ultimate competition of ideas on every client brief. It allows teams to share briefs across the whole network and incentivises individuals to provide great ideas. So our clients get access to 4000 minds, not just 4.

Not only does SOURCE benefit from the collective intelligence of the PHD network, it offers an integrated platform that combines cutting-edge thinking from the world of marketing and social sciences, with advanced data and sophisticated optimisation tools and systems.

SOURCE has improved ROI for our clients’ brands while providing an innovative and collaborative working environment – helping us to attract the industry’s best talent.

WINNER of Adweek’s Project Isaac Awards, which recognises inventions in media, technology, marketing and advertising.

We’re seeing more clients looking for a different way of doing things and placing increasing value on quality of thinking.

PHD’s heritage as the first strategic planning focused media agency has historically helped differentiate us from the competition. And today, we continue to set ourselves apart from other media agencies by leading the way in the evolution of global communications planning.

We have the industry’s largest global communications planning practice, shaping the marketing and communications approach for the brands of clients such as Unilever, GlaxoSmithKline, SC Johnson and VW Group.

Our strategy units in London, New York and Singapore employ hundreds of specialists focused entirely on global planning projects. Through SOURCE, we conduct seamless communications planning globally, enabling teams to collaborate with colleagues, clients, agency partners and other media agencies in markets all around the world to execute ideas.