trade press here<\/a> see it as being. Gideon Spanier in \u2018Campaign\u2019 called it: \u201c..one of the most significant moves in the media agency sector in five years and probably much longer\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\nThe logic is that brands are unquestionably looking to plan across brand-building and performance activities. Many traditional media agencies are great at the former and frankly not that great at the latter. Working consistently across the two is a challenge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Essence is without doubt a strong performance media agency. Of course that\u2019s not all the agency does, but that is at its heart.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
MediaCom on the other hand is \u2026 well, big. It\u2019s actually rather hard to summarise what sets the agency apart from other similarly big competitors.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The other GroupM agencies seem more differentiated. Mindshare has always been good at complicated international clients. That\u2019s the business\u2019 heritage, the agency did after all emerge from two strong full-service network agencies in JWT and Ogilvy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wavemaker (the agency formally known as MEC) has always been strong on total comms, and integrated messaging. Back in the day the then MEC was one of my first clients when I set up BJ&A, with a brief to advise on how they might differentiate the agency from its larger sibling Mindshare.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wavemaker has found its niche, has put smart tools in place and does what it does well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
So, on one level putting Essence and MediaCom together certainly creates a difference.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On another level a cynic (good day to you) might argue that WPP and GroupM have worked out that they really don\u2019t need four agency networks. After all, two or three seems to be quite sufficient for the competition. And they\u2019ve been here before with Maxus.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Why not close one via a merger, save costs, dress it all up as a brilliant scheme to deliver performance and brand skills in the same shop and trumpet something about meeting client needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
What strikes me as odd is that presumably Mindshare and Wavemaker clients have the same need to balance brand and performance. Are these two better at this than MediaCom and thus able to cope on their own without the need to call on Essence?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
And if that\u2019s not the case, what are they supposed to do now? Essence is no more as a standalone unit and is thus presumably unavailable.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Maybe Mindshare and Wavemaker have managed to develop these performance skills themselves in-house. If so, then how come MediaCom hasn\u2019t been able to do so?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Given that GroupM units have traditionally fought like rats in a sack for their own independence over their siblings it doesn\u2019t sound terribly likely that there\u2019s suddenly been an outbreak of peace and love between Essence and MediaCom.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
I buy the client need but this merger doesn\u2019t feel to me like it\u2019s all about meeting client needs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Rather it looks more like a cost saving venture dressed up as something rather more noble.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Surely Essence could have carved out its own niche which it then offered in various hues to all three GroupM siblings. Wouldn\u2019t an Essence-Inside model share expertise, tools and so on amongst all three traditional media agencies within the GroupM family?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Wouldn\u2019t all three have been strengthened to the greater benefit of GroupM \/ WPP?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The merger of Essence and MediaCom has been beautifully packaged and sold. The idea has been bought hook line and sinker by the press, but I can\u2019t help thinking that there\u2019s more to it than meets the eye.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But then this is the COG Blog \u2013 Cynical Old Git.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
GroupM has announced that Essence and MediaCom are joining forces to form a new media agency. EssenceMediaCom is a bit of a mouthful, not to mention a challenge to users of random capital letters but no doubt the new agency will soon have a shorter nickname \u2013 EM, EssenceofMedia or given the end goal of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1588"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1589,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1588\/revisions\/1589"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1588"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1588"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1588"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}