McDonald\u2019s<\/a> has decided to end a 35 year relationship with Publicis\u2019 Leo Burnett and move the creative piece of the US account into Omnicom, which already handles the media portion (and has done for many years).<\/p>\nWhat the heck’s going on, and what is in the US$9bn magic potion Omnicom seems to have acquired?<\/p>\n
After all, they\u2019ve managed to take US$4bn out of Publicis and US$5bn out of WPP, neither of whom can be said to be an easy touch. So they must be doing something right.<\/p>\n
First off, of course I have no idea. I wasn\u2019t in any of those pitches and even though 3 out of the 4 are old clients of mine the times and their priorities have changed out of all recognition.<\/p>\n
But not knowing never stopped any blogger from having an opinion.<\/p>\n
There are one or two interesting patterns.<\/p>\n
One is a focus on delivering to a need, whatever the structure required to do that. McDonald\u2019s and AT&T have brought creative and media together within the same holding company. The P&G solution was to be found in the formation of a new media agency.<\/p>\n
It\u2019s as if the holding company is setting aside the old structures and creating new teams from scratch from within their organisation. Omnicom’s opcos seem to have evolved a happy knack of being able to work together across disciplines, whatever the internal pressures that may (or may not) be created.<\/p>\n
WPP has for many years offered cross-disciplinary (and cross company) teams but at the same time Sir Martin Sorrell has been famous for his \u2018fight nicely\u2019 mantra, with the implication that each unit has to scrap with each other to meet financial goals.<\/p>\n
Publicis simply seems less practiced at this agile and flexible way of working.<\/p>\n
Omnicom, has always seemed, admittedly from afar to be less prescriptive than its rivals in how it runs its operating units. In an era where the options are so numerous it seems sensible to retain the flexibility to bend and stretch into whichever shape is the most appropriate.<\/p>\n
Whether I\u2019m right or wrong Omnicom seems to have found a winning formula. Will others learn from their losses? Yes of course they will.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
You have to admit it: Omnicom has been on a bit of a run.<\/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\/823"}],"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=823"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":824,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/823\/revisions\/824"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=823"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=823"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bjanda.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=823"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}