Mercier Gray goes into liquidation

Mercier Gray, the independent media-neutral agency, is to go into liquidation. All 50 of the agency’s staff are to lose their jobs.

Chartered accountants Berg Kaprow Lewis was called in to act as liquidator at the end of last week and the agency has ceased trading. It will be officially put into liquidation at a meeting on December 17 and subsequently wound down.

A spokeswoman for the agency would not comment except to confirm what had happened.

Mercier Gray, which is based in Covent Garden, was the brainchild of Anton Mercier and Rob Gray and its clients included Sega, Beiersdorf and GlaxoSmithKline.

The agency’s demise will come as a surprise to many in the industry as it was thought to be doing well.

In September, it moved up from 29th to 17th place in Marketing Week’s Promotional Marketing Agency Reputations Survey; the first time it had made the top 20.

It also created a £1m marketing campaign for Sega – the games publisher’s biggest – to support the launch of Football Manager 2005 earlier this month (MW November 4).

Earlier this month, fellow media-neutral agency Mr Smith was placed into administrative receivership. However, the agency, formerly known as Interfocus, was saved from closure by its senior management team.