Why join
MAGNET?
Complete candor.
Total trust.
There’s no shortage of agency conferences. Panels, keynotes, glossy agendas that overpromise and happy hours that underdeliver. MAGNET is different. A network rare enough that the people who find it stay for decades.
It’s built for the whole agency, not just the corner office. Principals find their peers. Department heads find their counterparts. Teams find the development and perspective that makes them sharper at their jobs. Truth without ego. Advice without agenda. Community without competition.
The leaders here show up differently. They’re generous with what they’ve learned and straight about what they haven’t. They share what worked, what didn’t, and what they’d do differently. No performing. No posturing.
Just people who take this work seriously and
want to grow alongside others who do, too.
Let's Talk
More than a calendar of events.
MAGNET programming isn’t a calendar of events. It’s a system designed to make you and your agency meaningfully better at every level, all year long.
Here’s how it works:
Summits
Twice a year. One big room. No pretending.
MAGNET brings the full network together in person two times a year, rotating locations around the world. Two days anchored around a single theme, chosen because it’s the thing everyone is wrestling with.
Outside keynote speakers bring fresh perspective. Agency-led sessions bring the hallway conversations onto the main stage. Evening programming turns a professional gathering into the kind of night you’d have with old friends who happen to be building something alongside you.
Equal parts inspiration and action. Our motto is learn on Thursday, apply on Monday.
Seminars
Real practitioners. Real build-outs. No theory.
Between summits, MAGNET curates a seminar series featuring members and their leadership teams sharing how they actually built something.
Not thought leadership. Not a pitch dressed up as a case study. Members walking through the real decisions, notable missteps, and tangible outcomes of building out capabilities their agencies needed.
Borrow the learning; skip the scar tissue.
Salons
Your team shows up for you. Show up for them.
Throughout the year, MAGNET brings in outside experts to develop programming built specifically for agency staff. Genuine skills, practical application. The kind of investment that shows up in your culture, your retention, and your work.
A sharper team makes the hard stuff easier and the good stuff better.
Forums
Your leadership team deserves a peer group too.
MAGNET’s functional forums bring together directors and leaders from across the network to compare notes, troubleshoot challenges, and share what’s actually working by discipline, at the right level of detail.
HR Forum – Meets monthly. Hiring strategy, company culture, performance criteria, organizational design, talent management, and the legal terrain that keeps HR leaders up at night.
CFO / Controller Forum – Meets quarterly. Financial forecasting, pricing strategy, vendor selection, and procurement. The financial mechanics of running a healthy independent agency.
AI Champions Forum – Meets monthly. Workflow integrations, smart tool deployment, and the honest conversation about where agency-wide adoption is actually working and where it isn’t.
COO Forum – Meets quarterly. Resource forecasting, sales planning, project management, operational and technological challenges, and organizational structure. The operational realities that rarely get airtime at the principal level.
Business Development Forum – Meets quarterly. Pipeline health, lead generation strategy, the new pitch landscape, and the marketing plans that move the needle. Where the people who fill the funnel compare notes.
Creative Forum – Meets quarterly. Talent nurturing, working smarter, and making space for the thing that started it all — the joy of creation.
Media Forum – Meets monthly. The evolving real-time landscape, best-in-class analysis, and the shifting client expectations that are reshaping the industry today.
These aren’t webinars. They’re working sessions with people who have the same job you do and are willing to be straight about it.
Retreats
When some conversations need a room of their own.
Select in-person workshops bring specific functions from across the network together for deeper, focused work, giving specialized teams space to go further than a monthly call allows.
No mute button. No gallery view. Just the work.
Compass
Your personal Board of Advisors. Without the equity ask.
A small group of 6 to 8 agency principals. All in. Meeting monthly, going deep on the full picture of what it means to lead — the business decisions, the leadership ones, and the ones that don’t fit neatly into either category.
Professional. Personal. Everything in between. What’s said in your Compass, stays in your Compass.
These aren’t casual check-ins. This is the cohort that helps you think through your next chapter, pressure-test your instincts, and hold your roadmap accountable. They’re vested in your success in the way only people who truly understand your world can be.
No outside facilitators. No generic frameworks. Just experienced agency leaders creating the conditions for honest, consequential conversation.
North star thinking, network-level support.
Membership qualifications
We welcome all independent marketing, advertising, and communications agencies who meet the following qualifications:
Independently owned company in the advertising and marketing business.
Willing to exchange and protect confidential information.
Ability to demonstrate good financial status.
No conflicts of interest with other member agencies.
Ability to understand and participate in English-language meetings.
In business 3+ years
