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Razor appoints Martin Patton as executive director

Martin Patton Headshot[1]Independent media agency Razor has appointed Martin Patton as its new executive director as the company moves to expand its operations into branded content.

Patton, who is currently the managing director of PHD’s sister agency, Foundation, will move across to the agency to run Razor’s media operations and develop a new branded content business.

“There are very few people in this industry that have the experience in both media and content and so Martin was a natural choice for us,” said Simon Rush, principal of Razor Group.

The Razor co-founder said he was pleased with the appointment and excited about the move into branded content. “The concept is a natural extension of a lot of the work we have been doing anyway,” said Rush.

“This is just expanding on the services that we already offer to our clients and taking it out of advertising and into a much broader run.”

Razor’s new executive director said he felt it was time for a change. “I’ve been with the Omnicom group for 12 years and it was a really good run, built a business from scratch and I felt it was the time to move,” said Patton. The new branded content business will be launched later this year and will be a specialist division within Razor.

Patten said he had a clear idea about the content the new division would need to produce.

“It has to be strategically led content. Sometimes you have people coming up with ideas but they are not anchored in a strategic sense to find the solution,” he said.

“Then you have the other component which is people coming up with the idea where they are strategically led but aren’t in a position to produce anything. Where this business will be different is we are going to have the strategic component, we’re going to have a channel planning component, and we’re going to help manage the distribution of that content.”

Last month former Publicis Mojo chairman Graeme Wills bought a stake in the Razor Group and will rebrand sister creative agency Us as Joy.

Patton replaces Jonathan Hopkins who departed the company. He will will commence the new role on May 6.

Nic Christensen

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