MSQ in North America: “We Want to Hold People’s Attention, Not Just Catch It”

“Whether or not you believe the future is still rooted in the creative side of the business, you sure do feel the absence of it when it’s missing,” says Aaron Lang, president of MSQ North America. “For us, it’s mandatory.”

Over the past year, MSQ has been steadily building up its presence and capabilities in North America. That’s perhaps best exemplified by two key strategic acquisitions, namely the New York-based creative agency SPCSHP, and the customer experience agency UDG. As Aaron goes on to explain, the additions have helped the MSQ team to “plug credibility gaps” and “build up our creative firepower”. 

But first, the fundamentals. In their own words, MSQ North America is a “unique combination of over 250+ strategists, designers, makers, technologists, data scientists, optimists, dreamers, doers, and tortured creatives all working under our method of joined-up thinking.” And the company’s move stateside – already being a hugely familiar name to anyone on this side of the Atlantic – is part of a push to prove that the holding company model is swiftly becoming a “relic of a bygone era” in advertising, and that a new way of working and making is taking shape. To that end, it’s no coincidence that MSQ has retained its status as an independent agency network. 

To get a better sense of what that ‘new world’ looks like, those two acquisitions are a good place to start. It goes back to Aaron’s point about creativity being the key differentiator -- and why SPCSHP and UDG are giving MSQ the necessary creative resources to find success in North America. “Where we’ve always been strong has been as a digital, tech, and data-focused operation – and this past year has been about filling in the credibility gaps when it comes to the creative,” Aaron explains. “We strongly believe in the creative side as a key differentiator. It’s a huge part of my own background, and I’m confident it’s still absolutely crucial even as the industry evolves.”

Whilst the company is still looking to grow – specifically in regards to its geographic presence to match its potential – Aaron notes that he isn’t asking how large of an organisation MSQ can become, but rather how big it should be. “We’re threading a needle between agility and scale,” he tells LBB. “There are many models out there, and we think ours – focusing on buying businesses of a certain size – is particularly compelling.”

Within that framework, the desire to put creativity front-and-centre is taking on a different dimension. That’s because, as Aaron somewhat bluntly puts it, there’s an extent to which “we've completely lost our minds as an industry with some of the stuff that we're doing in digital” and “we need to make sure we’re getting back to the idea of holding people’s attention and doing something meaningful with it, rather than just fleetingly capturing it and letting it go again.”

Modern Attention Seekers

On that point, I am quick to put the counterargument to Aaron. Specifically, brands are operating in an attention-deficit world, and a fragmented media landscape – so, how can anything other than a fleeting attention-grab be effective in the digital environment? 

“Look, I still believe that great storytelling is possible, even in a fragmented media environment,” responds Aaron. “You can see that in the things that actually make us pause, and capture our attention. In entertainment and wider culture, there’s undeniably plenty of longform content that’s moving the dial. Against that, we seem to be living in a world where we’re giving people smaller and smaller snippets of content, and let’s be real: It’s just not working. Often we’re optimising the wrong things – basing future behaviour on past behaviour without truly understanding human behaviour.” 

It’s up to companies like MSQ, then, to help brands rediscover their storytelling swagger in 2025. “Success will be about focusing on what motivates people rather than just the nitty-gritty details. While performance marketing is incredibly important (and we have strong capabilities in that area), it’s not the be-all and end-all,” continues Aaron. “Thinking about everything as an interconnected ecosystem, rather than focusing on one element as the sole driver, is key.” 

Part of that approach involves eschewing the traditional ‘matching luggage’ approach to modern marketing – wherein pieces of content of all shapes and sizes are built to include the same themes and visual motifs, and leaning instead towards a mindset of “coherence over consistency,” as Aaron puts it. 

“One challenge is that many brands try to be consistent when they should aim for coherence,” suggests Aaron. “Coherence in that context meaning content that sticks together without everything looking exactly the same – stories and elements that feel connected but come across as more natural, because they are tailored to their context rather than a broader idea of brand identity that viewers may not even be aware of.”

That’s a holistic approach which, rounding Aaron’s argument out, comes back to the importance of those acquisitions and how they provide the team at MSQ with the tools to walk the walk in North America. It’s a challenge that the team is approaching with a healthy blend of ambition, scale, and optimism. 

“If I could sum up our ambitions for MSQ in North America with one word, it would be ‘growth’,” says Aaron. “We want to deliver broader capabilities, greater scale, and a culture of collaboration across our businesses.”

That’s the practical side. But there’s also something less tangible about MSQ’s goals – something that Aaron is particularly keen to prove. “Delivering creative magic is vital,” he says. “I firmly believe that there’s still magic left in this business. And that we’re going to perform it.”

This article first appeared on Little Black Book here.