Opinion: On the Campaign Couch ... with JB.(Letter to the Editor)

Dear Jeremy, I hold a senior position at one of the most successful media agencies in the UK and I've been offered a position at a start-up.

I've been on cruise control in my current job for some time now and I need a new challenge. I know the people already on board and know that we would work well together. However, the agency has only one client and I think the move is imbued with a high level of risk. Not least of these is the consolidation of media agencies into powerful buying groups. Is there a future for a small start-up in this changing landscape?

A: They may not have spelt it out to you, but I bet you were offered this job in the expectation that you'd bring a lot of business with you. Why else would a start-up, with multiple partners already in place and with only one client, choose to add to their overheads?

People who have been part of large successful media companies often forget that large successful media companies attract new business simply because they're large successful media companies. Clients may occasionally follow a lone creative star but seldom if ever a lone media buyer. The bigger the buyer, in theory at least, the bigger the bang clients get for their bucks. All the lone media buyer can offer is an almost inaudible pop.

So the chances are, after the warm welcome and the shameless press release, you'll sit there, day after day, putting through calls to former clients but somehow never getting past Jacqui. Yes, that very same Jacqui who always used to laugh at your jokes and put you through to Nigel even on a Friday afternoon.

Quite soon, your new partners will become a lot less warm and welcoming and you'll realise with a deadly chill that they only loved you for your Rolodex. Quite soon, when you arrive in the morning, the receptionist will avoid your eye.

Not that I want to put you off, of course. Small media start-ups always have a chance. It's just that things never look too rosy for small media start-ups that stop being start-ups but go on being small.