Maja Pawinska Sims 04 Feb 2025 // 3:29PM GMT

LONDON — Marketing services M&A advisory Firm Agency Futures has strengthened its leadership team with the appointment of two new board advisors: former agency leader Jane Boardman OBE and entrepreneur and investor Oliver Bruce.
Boardman (pictured, left) brings more than 25 years of experience as a trailblazer in the marketing services sector. In 2001, she founded consumer PR and communications agency Talk (later Talk.Global) within M&C Saatchi; the agency merged with M&C Saatchi PR in 2020 to create M&C Saatchi Talk and she continued as CEO until her exit last April; COO Ryan Woor departed soon afterwards.
In 2019, Boardman founded the British Beauty Council, the trade body for the British beauty sector, and earlier in her career she was a board director at legendary consumer PR agency Lynne Franks, which was acquired by Ketchum in 1998 and became Ketchum Life; Boardman stayed with the agency as MD until she left to set up Talk in 2001.
Bruce (pictured, right) built two multi-million-pound businesses and acquired another before he was 30, and has been recognised by Lloyds Development Capital (LDC) and the Times as one of the top young entrepreneurs in the UK. He is an investor in companies such as OpenAI and SpaceX, and hosts the ‘Success Is In The Mind’ podcast, where he shares insights from founders and innovators.
Agency Futures founder Doug Baxter said the appointments reinforced the firm’s ‘Empathetic M&A’ approach, which focuses on “emotional intelligence, cultural alignment, and long-term success for both parties involved in a transaction”.
He said: “It has always been my experience that the fact that we are former agency owners is our greatest strength. All the partners and advisors at Agency Futures have founded, built, and sold our own agencies. That uniquely positions us to support other owners through what can be a highly emotional process.
“Our new board advisors bring valuable networks and expertise across disciplines such as PR, social, content, and performance marketing. This breadth of experience allows us to offer even more precise support to our clients, ensuring optimal opportunities and partnerships.”
In her new role, Boardman will help identify potential independent agencies that are looking to sell, and work with agency leaders and potential buyers to prepare for due diligence, assess cultural fit, and protect their legacy. She told PRovoke Media: “I’ve been working on a portfolio of consultancy projects, including brand strategy and non-exec roles, since I left Talk, and then Doug came along with this opportunity.
“I didn’t think of M&A as something that PR people do, but his ‘empathetic M&A’ approach means this isn’t all macho figures and streadsheets, and I realised how much experience I had, first with the Lynne Franks and Ketchum acquisition, and then the Talk & M&C Saatchi PR merger.”
Speaking about those experiences, she said: “The Lynne Franks/Ketchum merger could have gone wrong – you couldn’t get more chaotic than Lynne Franks in the 90s, and Ketchum was beautifully organised – but it ended up being a good mix of creative and crazy, with infrastructure around it. Back then, Ketchum really appreciated what the crazy kids bought, but you also hear horror stories after acquisitions of everything being cut and all the fun being sucked out.
“I’ve learned that the small things really matter to people – the big wigs waving cheque books forget it’s the day-to-day experiences that make an agency what it is. As my mentor James Maxwell said at the time, you have to be respectful of culture, and moments that matter, and that’s what buying agencies mean when they say they want people to get on with it, rather than imposing too many rules. Agencies being bought are largely owner-run independents, and that’s often what the clients love. If strip that all out, what have you got left?”
Boardman emphasised that modern M&A was no longer about big marketing services groups buying independent PR agencies: “There are lots of new types of parent companies emerging who we’re talking to, who are looking at stuff in a different way.
“We’re talking to buyers and investors who don’t want to just take over, they want the acquired agency to have its own spirit, but they provide proper central infrastructure, from tech to HR, that independent agency owners can be quite useless at – including me in the past – and not interested in. There are lots of opportunities for agencies to have an interesting conversation with buyers about how to grow and develop.”
On her new role, Boardman said she would initially be doing a “landscape assessment” of independent agencies looking to sell to Agency Futures’ buy-side clients: “There’s so many anxiety-ridden questions that agency owners will have, while they are still working for clients and managing people – you don’t have a lot of space and time to think about the future. I will say, if you are thinking of selling even in two or three years, you should be talking to us now, so we can help to at least get your finances in order.”
Other key factors in a successful acquisition, from Boardman’s experience, include whether the blend of cultures will work, and how structure and governance might need to be changed: “Sometimes that’s the biggest shock to people, robust accounting and cash flow, time sheets, scope of work, contracts. Also, acquired agencies need to bring their own new business to the table, and not expect their new parent company to feed them. And the other bit of the equation is team structure and succession planning: who are the stars, and who is a flight risk? I’m fascinated by it all; I didn’t think of M&A as my bag but I now understand the role that I can play.”
In his role at Agency Futures, Bruce will provide strategic insights to both agency founders and prospective buyers, helping them evaluate growth potential, scalability, and long-term alignment in M&A partnerships.
He said: “I joined Agency Futures to support, empower, and help agency owners and founders explore opportunities to scale, exit, or achieve the value they rightfully deserve from their life's work. With my background, I understand the pressures of business growth and innovation, and I look forward to helping agency owners and buyers navigate their next big moves.”