Plume is bought out by The Attik

The Attik has bought screen graphics specialist Plume in a deal intended to extend the graphics group’s global reach across multimedia and advertising.

The takeover, for an undisclosed sum, means the Plume name will be abandoned. Plume creative head Richard Morrison becomes creative director “on the moving image side” of The Attik, says Attik group creative director Simon Needham.

Morrison will join The Attik’s UK board, but a decision has yet to be made on his role in the global business, which has a projected turnover of 8m for 1998.

Plume’s former managing director Kate Irving becomes account director at The Attik. Plume’s two other staff, executive producer Olive Segré and senior designer David Cheung, keep their jobs, bringing The Attik’s total staff up to 79 worldwide.

The deal was hatched after Needham met Morrison on the Design Week Awards judging panel. Prior to that, both businesses were looking to broaden their offer, The Attik into advertising commercials, and Plume into screen-based business communications and multimedia.

Both groups claim to put creativity first. “It’s a bit like being an artist,” says Morrison. “It doesn’t matter what canvas we’re on. It’s about creativity.”

Irving describes Attik as part of “a new genre” of creative agencies. “We don’t want to be like Sampson Tyrrell Enterprise or Lambie-Nairn,” she says. “We’re being put against the likes of Mother, St Lukes and Tomato.”

The Plume team is due to join The Attik in new central London premises in about six weeks’ time. The Attik has offices in west London, Huddersfield and New York, but is planning to shift its northern operation to Leeds and open a second US office in San Francisco.

The Attik has picked up 50 ad spots for MTV through its office in New York, where group managing director James Somerville recently joined the consultancy’s US president William Travis.

See News Analysis, page 8

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