The World: How the UK's ad pioneers are faring Stateside.

Attempting to conquer the Big Apple has proved a major challenge for even the best of British agencies, Ann Cooper writes.

Whether you call them invaders or entrepreneurs, most UK agencies setting up in New York favour a slow, low-key strategy. They are in it for the long haul, with each taking a measured approach to the Big Apple's notoriously unwelcoming attitude to carpetbaggers.

Such arrivistes have included M&C Saatchi, which hung out its New York shingle in 1994, Bartle Bogle Hegarty, which landed amid much fanfare in 1998, the media agency Michaelides & Bednash, which arrived in 2001, and Mother, which created a media frenzy when it opened an office in 2003.

But timing is everything. And, now, more than ever, the improving economy, a changing media climate and more openness on the part of clients translates into opportunities for UK agencies. Naked, the UK strategic planning consultancy with international clients such as Coca-Cola, certainly thinks so. It plans to launch across the Pond within months. 'We're being led by demand and we're meeting potential clients and going through the process,' John Harlow, one of Naked's founders, says. 'We want to do it at our own pace and get it right.'

Harlow, who plans to tout a service called The Big Tool, says feedback has been positive. 'Half-a-dozen agencies want to work with us,' he says. 'With clients such as Procter & Gamble and Coca-Cola leading the way toward communications planning, we want to focus on the right people who can deliver an authentic US feel. We don't want an all-Brit line-up.'

M&C Saatchi arrived in the US mainly to service British Airways. The aim, Tom Dery, the executive chairman, Asia-Pacific and the US, says, was always to grow slowly. 'We wanted to offer good local service combined with global thinking. We're not a big network and we use our resources tightly.'

In 1999, it opened an LA service office, which won accounts including Ketel One, Qantas and the San Diego Zoo. 'LA started later and is a different business model, using local resources and calling in satellites as required,' Dery says. 'Our ambitions are not that different today. We don't want to be the biggest, but the most sought-after.'