{"id":745,"date":"2016-04-07T11:52:25","date_gmt":"2016-04-07T10:52:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/?p=745"},"modified":"2016-04-07T11:52:25","modified_gmt":"2016-04-07T10:52:25","slug":"the-new-shape-of-agencies","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/the-new-shape-of-agencies\/","title":{"rendered":"The New Shape of Agencies"},"content":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s become common-place to criticise agencies for not changing their business model, as if this was the sort of thing anyone could do between breakfast and lunchtime.<\/p>\n

Life is further complicated by the fact that agencies are fundamentally service businesses \u2013 which means that they are or should be structured to meet their clients\u2019 diverse and evolving current and future needs.<\/p>\n

Last month the US agencies\u2019 trade body, the 4A\u2019s held its Transformation Conference, at which both Maurice Levy from Publicis, and Wendy Clark from Omnicom\u2019s DDB were amongst the speakers. Clark is an agency leader who has changed \u2018sides\u2019, her previous role being at The Coca-Cola Company.<\/p>\n

Also last month we heard from WPP\u2019s Sir Martin Sorrell at The Guardian\u2019s Changing Media Summit.<\/p>\n

There are some common and interesting themes emerging as the agency holding groups do indeed react to these changing times.<\/p>\n

First, it seems that Omnicom and Publicis are (separately) on the move. The aborted merger between the two of them must have had a dramatic effect on the two organisations\u2019 speed of evolution; after all it was only two years ago (almost to the day) that rumours started to appear that maybe this merger might not take place.<\/p>\n

Two years isn\u2019t long to regroup and regain any lost momentum.<\/p>\n

The AdAge report<\/a> on the 4A\u2019s event has Publicis\u2019 Maurice Levy making the point that: \u201cthe company will no longer be called a holding company, but a “connecting company,” because the holding company model is dead and gone\u201d.<\/p>\n

You can probably hear the hollow laughter from WPP, who have for many years created client teams drawn from their appropriate operating units, with varying degrees of success, but there does seem to be a subtle difference.<\/p>\n

The WPP model seems to me to be primarily about upselling WPP\u2019s range of services to existing clients.<\/p>\n

The Publicis phrase, \u2018connecting company\u2019 sounds a bit more about collaborating to meet client needs, even if some of the collaborations are with non-Publicis companies.<\/p>\n

Wendy Clark, discussing her agency\u2019s new DDB Flex approach talked of \u201cembed(ding) media partners and marketing partners in the process and most importantly.. embed(ding) clients up front and early.. placing high priority on collaboration with clients and other partners\u201d.<\/p>\n

There were two other interesting references. Both Levy (\u201ccreativity will remain indispensable\u201d) and Clark (\u201cputting your agenda ahead of your client’s agenda will never work\u201d) seemed to be putting some clear blue water between themselves and WPP.<\/p>\n

Sir Martin Sorrell has never made any secret of his preference for numbers in every shape and form over advertising creativity (yes, I know numbers can be creative too..). The financial strength of his GroupM network is crucial to the overall well-being of the holding company, and there can be no question that a part of that financial strength comes from delivering to a single-minded vision of the Group\u2019s own agenda, almost regardless of clients.<\/p>\n

After all, Sir Martin is greatly and rightly admired by his peers in client companies. Being in any way driven by his clients\u2019 agendas can\u2019t come easy.<\/p>\n

It wasn\u2019t really too much of a surprise when he announced that WPP was \u201cnot in the advertising business any more\u201d, although perhaps the insertion of the word \u2018only\u2019 might have been appropriate.<\/p>\n

One commentator Asa Bailey<\/a> put it well: \u201cThe medical industry has not abandoned medicine and suddenly started rebranding doctors as computer programmers even though, like in advertising, increasingly doctors also rely on and use data and software to invent new ways to treat people\u201d.<\/p>\n

Collaboration and creativity aided by technology versus control and technology as an end in itself seems to be about the sum of it.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It\u2019s become common-place to criticise agencies for not changing their business model, as if this was the sort of thing anyone could do between breakfast and lunchtime.<\/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\/745"}],"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=745"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":746,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/745\/revisions\/746"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=745"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=745"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=745"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}