It’s the Age of Google and Sorrell has no time – or money – for Twitter

April 29, 2013

Martin SorrellThe most interesting thing about WPP Group’s first quarter financial results were not the numbers, but its chief executive’s obiter dicta.

The numbers themselves were a curate’s egg. They beat the revenue forecast, bizarrely enough they delighted in Britain, but they disappointed in the United States. Which is just about the only part of the world economy currently showing signs of dynamism.

The obiter dicta, on the other hand, were curiously memorable. WPP CEO Sir Martin Sorrell used the occasion (well, near enough: he was actually speaking at the FT Digital Media Conference the previous day) to highlight a singular phenomenon. So far as his company is concerned (and it  is, after all, the number one spender of advertising money in the world), Google will soon become a bigger destination for his clients’ money than the biggest traditional media owner in his stable, News Corporation. Google is currently in receipt of $2bn of WPP’s quarterly spend; while NewsCorp gets about $2.5bn. But, given the Google figure represents a 25% increase year on year, it can only be a short time – Sorrell assures us – before the search giant moves into pole position.

I say “search giant”, but that of course is history. Sorrell’s underlying point is that Google – after some initial fumbling – has made the transition from a techie company, peopled by nerds, into a multi-media corporation with global reach. He calls it  ”a five-legged stool”: there’s search (of course); display advertising; social media (google+); mobile (via Android and AdMob); and video through YouTube.

Note well where Sorrell places his chips, however. From an advertising point of view, the Age of Google (as he calls it) is primarily defined by video. YouTube has made big inroads into what traditionally would have been television viewing. He’s bullish about mobile, too: Android is now the most popular smartphone platform and in some developing markets, like China, it accounts for two-thirds of all mobile sales.

But social media: Oh dear, what an advertiser’s no-no! Yahoo, though generally lacklustre these days, garners about $400m of WPP spend. Facebook, infinitely more successful with its audience figures, receives only $270m. And Twitter a lot, lot less. What’s the logic? Well, Yahoo “gets” the commercial need for a five-legged strategy (indeed, TechCrunch speculates it is about to buy Dailymotion, a smaller competitor to YouTube). Whereas Facebook and Twitter do not. Facebook, Sorrell reckons, is important for brands – but in a negative sense – absence of criticism, which has little to do with any advertising content. Twitter, on the other hand, is simply a PR medium with almost no value to advertisers.

“It’s very effective word of mouth,” Sorrell told Harvard Business Review last month. “We did analyses of the Twitter feeds every day, and it’s very, very potent…I think because it’s limited in terms of number of characters, it reduces communication to superficialities and lacks depth.”

Maurice Levy, CEO of Publicis, speaks during the Reuters Global Media Summit in ParisThat last may sound a little harsh. And is certainly not a universally accepted view among admen. Significantly, it is not shared by Sorrell’s deadliest rival, Maurice Lévy – chief executive of Publicis Groupe. Lévy has just announced a four-year pact with Twitter which will involve PG’s media planning and buying arm Starcom MediaVest Group committing up to $600m of client money to monetizing Twitter’s audience. Details, at this point, are sketchy.  It is clear, however, we are not just talking “pop-ups” here. Lévy makes specific reference to video links and “new formats” yet to be developed. He admits to there being “some risk” involved in the project, though whether this relates to his own reputation, clients’ money or both is not apparent.

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Age cannot wither them, nor shareholders vote them off the holding company board

April 16, 2013

David-Jones---Havas-007Whoever said advertising was a young person’s business? The conventional wisdom is that at 40, most ad executives would be advised to investigate a second career. And at 50, they’ll be positively clapped out and  have “post-economic” freedom foisted upon them whether they like it or not.

Superficially, membership statistics for the Institute of Practitioners of Advertisers (IPA – the UK adman’s trade body) bear this theory out. When I last looked (which was admittedly a while ago, but I doubt the demographic profile has improved), the number of members surviving their 50th birthday was a vanishingly small 6%.

But these are just the worker bees. Look at the nerve centre of the hive – the main board of the world’s leading advertising holding companies – and you’ll find that gerontocracy has never had it so good.

I was forcibly reminded of this the other day by Marketing Services Financial Intelligence editor Bob Willott.

Willott has done a demographic survey of the Omnicom main board and found the average age to be an astonishing 70. In his own words:

The oldest of the 13 board members is the chairman and former chief executive officer Bruce Crawford.  He is 84 and has been a director for 24 years. His successor as CEO John Wren is a sprightly 60 and has served on the board for 20 years.

I have yet to do the arithmetic upon the board composition of other global holding companies, but the most superficial of surveys suggests a similar age-profile, if their chief executives are anything to go by. At WPP Group, there is an evergreen Sir Martin Sorrell – still incontrovertibly ruling the roost at 68; and likely to do so for a good while yet unless shareholders go nuclear over his annual pay review. Interpublic Group chairman and CEO Michael Roth sails imperturbably on at 67, despite repeated attempts by the media to unseat him or sell his company to a rival. And at Publicis Groupe we have the grand-daddy of them all Maurice Lévy – 71 – with no successor in sight, despite repeated attempts to pretend he has found one.

All this looks terribly good for that comparative whipper-snapper, David Jones (pictured above). At only 46, the global CEO of Havas can anticipate at least another 25 years at the helm.

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Richard Pinder launches global network with Maserati as a client

March 26, 2013

Richard PinderAfter years of being a jet-setting senior suit in someone else’s service, Richard Pinder has decided to go global on his own account with the ambitious launch of international network The House Worldwide.

Pinder, it will be recalled, was head of Publicis Worldwide for five years until group succession politics (the imposition of Jean-Yves Naouri as executive chairman) made further tenure of his position unrealistic.

That was two years ago. Since then, Pinder has been pondering how to cash in on his experience with global clients (he’s worked for over 25 years in Asia, Europe and the USA; for Leo Burnett, Ogilvy & Mather and Grey, as well as Publicis) by building a new-model worldwide agency network.

No mean cliché, the cynic will object. We’ve heard the rhetoric before. What’s the reality?

It’s true that the agency world has long been struggling with a “post-analogue” structural solution to the increasingly financially unviable traditional creative agency network, with its army of regional bureaucracies. Some have proffered a solution in the form of the fleeter-footed international micro-network (step forward BBH, Wieden & Kennedy and – in its heyday – StrawberryFrog.

Pinder, however, has gone a step further in presenting a top-down managerial solution – or perhaps that should be management consultancy solution – in place of the piecemeal creative one. His starting point is that the traditional global advertising business – unlike professional counterparts such as lawyers and accountants – loses most of its senior talent to the management of regional geographic fiefdoms, which are there primarily because of historical legacy. What this talent should be doing is servicing the client’s agenda rather than their own corporate one. The exception, where the client really can insist on top-level personal service, is a vanishingly small number of mega-clients, such as Ford and Procter & Gamble, which have specially structured teams to pander to their requirements.

Pinder’s idea is to provide this level of service for global, or at least international, clients further down the budgetary league table. Each client should be serviced by no less than three senior people at any one time. To do this, he has joined forces with a core team of like-minded senior executives: initially, Peter Rawlings, former chief operating officer DDB Asia, Chris Chard, former chief strategy officer of Lowe Worldwide in New York and Ben Stobart, former senior vice-president (chief suit) of Burnett Chicago. These will deal directly with top clients on a day-to-day basis; the specialist skills base, on the other hand, is to be provided by a network of over a dozen associated network companies, of which the best known is Naked Communications (see AdWeek for a full list).

Note the absence of an overall chief creative officer. This is deliberate: Pinder does not believe a single individual can adequately address the creative needs of all client types.

Why is Pinder convinced this model can operate from a single fixed geographical location (well, actually two in THW’s case – London and Singapore)?  Because of consolidation on the brand management side. More and more marketing power is being concentrated into the hands of Chief marketing officers and indeed chief executives; less and less being delegated to regional and country power bases.

But, the acid test is: has Pinder got any clients? Yes he has. He has been collaborating with two over the past year in honing the organisational structure of THW, during what he calls “beta mode” (how digitally au courant).

And they are? Maserati and an upmarket specialist haircare brand, GHD (stands for “Good Hair Day”). Both, he tells me, are poised at an interesting fulcrum of development, from the brand and new product point of view.

Maserati, an ultra luxury sports car marque lodged in the Chrysler/Fiat stable, has been given a €1.6bn injection to broaden its model range and take on Porsche.

GHD – which produces premium-priced hair stylers – is also cash-rich after being bought for £300m by Lion Capital. Lion is investing in npd, with a view to bringing GHD out of the salon and onto the international stage. Inevitably, that is going to involve careful brand positioning as GHD moves into a broader market segment.

However, Pinder is coy on the subject of who, apart from Maserati and GHD, is bankrolling all of this. It seems likely that both principal founders (Pinder and Rawlings) have skin in the game. But a project of this scope is financially beyond most individual investors, even if they are relatively wealthy admen. Private equity seems to the answer. Among the list of network associates is, rather intriguingly, a UK-based hedge fund called Toscafund, whose chairman is former RBS bigwig Sir George Mathewson. Pinder claims Toscafund is very handy on the “analytics” side. No doubt. But my guess is it’s providing a lot more resource than that.

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HSBC’s £400m global review that never was

March 9, 2013

Chris Clark HSBCSo, what was all that about? HSBC’s group marketing director Chris Clark calls a review of the “£400m” (actually rather less these days) global account late last year. Well, not exactly a review. More a series of private meetings that happen to take in the incumbent agency’s rivals at Omnicom, IPG and Publicis – just in case they have any bright ideas. No fundamental discussions take place on either strategy or creativity, because none are called for, even from the incumbent JWT.

Sniffing a rat, McCann (IPG) and BBDO (Omnicom) pull out. Late yesterday (a good time to bury news) it trickles out that WPP has, er, retained the account. But there have been a few twists of the kaleidoscope. Most salient is that outsider Saatchi & Saatchi (Publicis) will now handle the small-spending (relatively speaking) retail banking and wealth business across Europe and in Latin America. JWT is still at the epicentre, with the global brand business, but will now share the rest of the account with its WPP sister agency, Grey London.

Is this a classic piece of agency punishment meted out by the client? We still like you, WPP: but you’ve gone a bit flabby. So, just to make sure you’re on your toes, we’ll keep you on tenterhooks for a few months and then award a chunk of business to one of your rivals – to see how hungry they are.

Was it simply an exercise in cheese-paring the fees, as JWT officially likes to see it, on the part of one of the world’s wealthiest institutions?

Or is this Chris Clark desperately trying to justify his job as CMO (in all but name)? A marking time exercise, while he and his boss, HSBC chief executive Stuart Gulliver, dream up a successor to the faded strap line, The World’s Local Bank?

Because, of course, it isn’t anymore. If you rolled the market capitalisation of Barclays, Lloyds Bank and RBS together, they wouldn’t add up to that of HSBC – which remains by far Britain’s largest bank. But internationally, Gulliver has been busy rolling back the borders, with the divestment of businesses from as far afield as Argentina, Russia and Singapore. The proceeds of which were one contributory reason for the humungous profits the bank was able to declare only last week.

In the recent past, Clark has talked up the need to spend more marketing pounds on the product side (i.e., the separate bank businesses) and less on the corporate brand. One reasonable interpretation of this stance is that banks, in these bonus-bashing times, would do well to get their heads down to providing some basic customer service, as opposed to extravagantly boasting about their global expanse.

Another (they are not mutually exclusive) is that Clark and his colleagues haven’t got a clue what they should do. “In the future” doesn’t quite do it, does it? And in any case, as Clark himself once quipped, it’s more of a start than an end line.

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Neogama loses Bradesco, Omo to Interpublic – and 40% of its revenue

January 30, 2013

alexandre-gamaNot all fairy tales have a happy ending. One such is the marriage of convenience between Brazilian hotshop Neogama, its micro-network affiliate BBH and Publicis Groupe. Readers of this blog will recall that, a little over six months ago, Publicis chief Maurice Lévy bought out the 51% of BBH PG did not already own. A useful by-product of the deal was that he acquired not only BBH’s 34% stake in one of Brazil’s hottest agency properties, but the majority shareholding of its founder and creative supremo, Alexandre Gama, at the same time. Neatly, Lévy solved the creative succession crisis at BBH with the same stroke of his pen – by appointing Gama as BBH’s global creative chief, replacing Sir John Hegarty.

Alas, the deal has worked out somewhat better for Gama than for Lévy and Publicis. Gama managed to bank his cheque, but Neogama has just lost about 40% of its revenue, and two of its principal clients. Or so I hear.

It is common knowledge that one of the reasons Gama was hawking his majority stake in the first place was that he feared his agency was too reliant upon a single account, that of Brazilian bank Bradesco. Indeed, rumours soon began to surface that the bank was about to review. Well, now it has: and placed the account with McCann.

For Interpublic, McCann’s parent, Neogama’s plight is, however, a double joy. Another major – this time multinational – client has also fallen into its lap. I mean Omo (“Dirt is Good”), which has moved to Lowe.

In retrospect, we can see this was an accident waiting to happen. As is well known, PG is a Procter & Gamble agency group, and Omo is owned by Unilever. Under the status quo ante, Neogama had an element of protection from client conflict, in that BBH – itself a major Unilever network – was still majority-owned by its founding partners (i.e., Nigel Bogle and Hegarty). All that ring-fencing was swept away by the Lévy deal.

8027388763_a9feed3b19_zIt will interesting to see who gets the blame for this cock-up. My money is on Jean-Yves Naouri, the once but not future king of Publicis.

One thing you can be sure of: it won’t be the Silver Fox himself, who now seems comfortably ensconced in a permanent chairman role, despite recent protestations that he was – at 70 – on the point of retiring.

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L’Affaire Renault reaches a suicidal nadir

October 12, 2012

Ah, the cynicism of the modern corporation. Remember all those years ago when Jo Moore, spin doctor to Stephen Byers, Department of Transport, Local Government and Regions secretary, emailed her boss those immortal words, referring to 9/11: “It’s now a very good day to get out anything we want to bury.”?

Well, now the French are having a similar moment of national revulsion at what’s called “L’Affaire Renault”. Readers of this blog will recall my post detailing Publicis Groupe CEO Maurice Lévy’s grubby attempt – successful at first – to stitch up Renault director of customer marketing Philippe Clogenson when the latter had the temerity to consider placing his business outside the Publicis empire. Clogenson was one of four senior Renault executives summarily fired (Clogenson for corruption, the other three for alleged industrial espionage) at the beginning of 2011 – only to be rehabilitated in the most humiliating way possible for Renault boss Carlos Ghosn and his number two, who subsequently had to resign.

And, guess what? The judicial investigation into the Renault scandal, now consuming many hours of M. Ghosn’s time, has turned up a new shocker. According to verified documents published in Le Parisien today, the car manufacturer had prepared draft statements for release in the eventuality that any of the executives attempted or committed suicide. The draft document, prepared by then director of communications Frédérique Le Grèves, read, “The entire company is profoundly shaken by the seriousness of this act. Our thoughts are with the family of M. XXX.” Fill in, as appropriate.

Contacted by Le Parisien, Le Grèves – now Ghosn’s chief of staff – managed to dig herself into a still deeper hole by insisting that the draft communiqué was “pure and simple anticipation, just a form of words in case we needed to respond to journalists.” The rehabilitated executives must have been delighted with that touch. But the broader point, which seems to have escaped Renault’s senior management, is the French public is aghast at the cynicism of it all. Le Grèves simply can’t understand what all the hullabaloo is about. I wonder how much longer she will remain Le Ghosn’s chief of staff.

The examining magistrate, Hervé Robert, took up half a day of Ghosn’s valuable time during his last hearing – and has threatened a 10-hour marathon during his next. I’m sure Lévy can barely wait for the judge’s attention to be turned to himself.

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P&G’s Gillette strategy? Blame the messenger with a $150m account review

September 18, 2012

It seems Gillette advertising is the best a man can get not after all. Not at least when that man is Procter & Gamble Brand-Building Officer Marc Pritchard. Pritchard has just put the North American shaving, deodorant and body wash business up for review, which at a spend of $150m last year (according to Kantar) makes it the kernel of the Gillette worldwide business.

That, by the way, will also be up for review quite soon, and must be worth upwards of $300m in total.

In the world of advertising, this is a seismic event. BBDO has handled the Gillette account for ever. Or, to be a little more precise about the matter, since 1966 in America, when it bought the Clyne Maxon agency, which first won the business in 1931. In 1989 BBDO devised one of the most famous advertising tag lines of all time: The Best A Man Can Get. And in 2005, it successfully hurdled perhaps the biggest agency relationship crisis it had ever faced when P&G acquired the formerly independent shaving products company for $63bn, yet decided to retain BBDO as its global agency – despite it never having appeared on a P&G roster previously.

So why a review now? Why at all in fact? After all, highly public account reviews of this kind  – it’s going to last up to 6 months according to P&G – are as rare as hens’ teeth on Planet Cincinnati.

Naturally enough, P&G is playing down the significance of the review. It’s only a chunk of BBDO’s advertising contract that is under threat, they say – not Braun, not the Venus ladies range, not the media account. As if Hamlet could somehow continue to play without the presence of an insignificant character like the Prince. And they are at pains to reassure us that BBDO advertising is still “good” (according to Patrice Louvet, president global grooming and shave care). But, and here is the kiss of death for the Omnicom-owned advertising network:  ”We believe there’s an opportunity to be even better and, importantly, to better integrate the product proposition with the overall idea.”

Let’s unravel all the marketing-speak for a minute. BBDO and its sister below-the-line agency Proximity are going to repitch for the business: sure they are, but with what chance of success? The present advertising stinks, is P&G’s subtext.

P&G has been losing share in some very trying market conditions. There’s a recession on out there. People are thinking of value for money but what they’re seeing in its place is an overpriced top-of-the-range Fusion razor system and a fading mid-market legacy brand, Mach 3, that’s being out-priced and out-promoted by Schick. Gillette’s ace in the pack is innovation: it prides itself on being able to charge its customers more for (literally) cutting-edge razor technology. A replacement for Fusion is coming up – probably in 2014 – and Cincinnati has got the jitters. If Fusion Plus (0r whatever it’s going to be called) doesn’t come up with the premium-priced goods, then P&G shareholders are going to be really unhappy. So, it’s time to blame the messenger – or at any rate keep him mean and keen with an extravagant display of market disciplining.

Wieden & Kennedy – the agency that can do anything, including handling Tesco, these days – is the roster favourite to win the account. But don’t underestimate Andrew Robertson, President and CEO of BBDO Worldwide, as he rises to the account challenge of his career.

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Lévy accused of falsely denouncing ‘corrupt’ Renault marketing executive

August 25, 2012

In a new twist to an old corruption scandal that engulfed Renault two years ago, Maurice Lévy, head of Publicis Groupe, has been accused of bringing about the unfair dismissal of a senior marketing executive at the French car company.

To recap, three senior Renault executives were dismissed at the beginning of 2011 after they were accused – falsely it later turned out – of passing top-secret electric-car technology to the Chinese. At the same time Philippe Clogenson, director of customer marketing, was fired after he was found to have accepted corrupt payment from a supplier.

Later, Renault boss Carlos Ghosn was forced into an embarrassing climbdown and his second-in-command resigned after it emerged the allegations that had brought down all four executives were false.

Clogenson was subsequently reinstated and compensated for wrongful dismissal (as were the other three executives).

It now emerges that the man who accused him was none other than Lévy himself. That at least is the substance of a witness statement from Marc Tixador, a former policeman now himself the subject of an investigation, who was hired by Renault to conduct an internal inquiry into the allegations.

According to Tixador: “In May 2009, we were put onto the Philippe Clogenson case by his direct superior, Stephen Norman. He, in turn, had been tipped off by M.Lévy, boss of Publicis, that a Renault employee whose first name was “Philippe” and who, more specifically, was in charge of marketing, had been taking bribes from certain suppliers. Our internal inquiry and discussions with Publicis enabled us to establish that the suspect must have been Philippe Clogenson.”

Lévy has been quick to play down his own role. While not denying Tixador’s statement, he had this to tell the French national newspaper Libération: “Some information came my way, but no surname was mentioned. I purely and simply passed that information to Renault, with infinite precaution. I didn’t denounce M. Clogenson or anyone else. I didn’t know the surname and I didn’t try to find it out either. It was the internal security team at Renault who tracked it down and made the deduction.”

This, to say the least, is a lame mitigation of his conduct. As Libération sarcastically points out, the very mention of a Philippe working in marketing would have enormously simplified the task of the internal investigation. But the newspaper also casts doubt upon the authenticity of Lévy’s account. It says that Tixador’s colleague, an ex-military type called Dominique Gevrey (himself under investigation at one point), gave a much more explicit version of Lévy’s role: “Lévy telephoned Tixador directly, who put the speaker-phone on in my presence.” Lévy then (according to Libération’s account) proceeded to badmouth Clogenson (accablant Clogenson de tous les maux). Gevrey claimed that Norman played only a minor part in the investigation, passing on the information that he had been told Clogenson and a supplier were involved in financial irregularities – without at any point specifying who the source of these accusations was.

What remains to be unravelled is Lévy’s motive for tipping off the investigation team about Clogenson. Libération, which broke the story yesterday, speculates that it could have something to do with Clogenson giving business to digital agency Fullsix – a competitor to Publicis, which is the dominant Renault agency.

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InterPublicis Groupe – who would run it?

August 3, 2012

The market, as I said last week, is awash with rumours that Publicis Groupe is about to pounce on poor old Interpublic.

No, really – seriously awash. So much so that IPG stock had jumped more than 10% to $10.87 when I last looked, on speculation that PG is considering a $15-a-share paper-and-cash knock-out deal which would value IPG at $6bn. Rothschild is said to be working feverishly behind the scenes with other banks.

And IPG, what is it saying? ”It is our policy not to comment on market rumors or speculation.” So, that might be a yes then. Publicis Groupe? Impenetrable silence. The rumour has got the investment community hooked, that’s for sure:  ”We think the reports are credible,” Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser tells us in a research note.  Wieser is a former Interpublic executive who worked at its MagnaGlobal arm.

But how credible? Sure, from a financial engineering point of view it looks plausible. It would catapult Publicis Groupe to second largest marketing services group by revenue, behind WPP – creating a spectacular rejoinder to Dentsu’s stunning $5bn takeover bid for Aegis. And mean that PG pdg Maurice Lévy could exit the stage after a high ‘C’ that cracks all the chandeliers.

Client conflicts? Not as bad as they might seem at first sight – given the size of these two behemoths. For example, they share L’Oréal and Nestlé; they have shared General Motors. On the other hand, I wouldn’t have minded being a fly on the wall when Paul Polman, CEO of Unilever, and Robert McDonald, CEO of Procter & Gamble, first heard the rumour. It’s not just a question of client conflict – the two rivals reputedly loathe each other.

But here’s my real question. Who is going to run the new show? A sophisticated French adman who is too old and keeps telling us he is about to retire? Or a US former corporate lawyer (step forward Michael Roth) whose track record in running a publicly quoted marketing services company is at best indifferent? Would anyone except a Frenchman be allowed to run such a company, given that Publicis Groupe is such a national treasure? And if a Frenchman, who has the stature?

Over two years ago I flagged up the possibility of just such a merger. Then, like now, IPG’s share price was depressed and the moment seemed opportune.

At that time, PG had recently acquired an expensive M&A expert from Goldman Sachs called Isabelle Simon, whose skills were exactly matched to crafting just such a financial operation. And the PG succession crisis seemed a lot less pressing than it is today.

Simon clearly got fed up waiting. Last year she defected to a Monaco gambling organisation.

UPDATE 6/8/12: It turns out IPG bid fever is no more than a symptom of mid-summer madness. Publicis has released, tardily it must be said, the following statement: ”Publicis Groupe denies having engaged in any discussions with Interpublic Group of Companies and confirms that it has not commissioned any bank to undertake any such discussions.” There is of course room to manoeuvre within the terms of this statement. Notice, for example, that Publicis does not exclude the possibility of having planned such a bid, merely having “discussed” it with IPG or one of its investment intermediaries. Nevertheless, the denial puts the dampers on a merger which, these days, doesn’t add up so compellingly for PG.

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£1.7bn global ad review is creative solution to Johnson & Johnson’s money problem

July 25, 2012

It would be nice to think that Johnson & Johnson’s newly announced review of its £1.7bn annual advertising spend was driven by a need for greater creative consistency. But it isn’t.

Money’s the thing – saving it that is. J&J may be one of the world’s biggest brands, but it’s also a company in trouble. Since 2009 J&J has suffered numerous recalls in the US, mainly of its over-the-counter drugs like Tylenol and Benadryl; but the prescription and medical devices businesses have also been hard hit. All in all, it’s said to have lost $1bn in sales, partly through bad luck and mostly through sheer incompetence.

At first it was the staff – including the marketing department – who paid, by being made surplus to requirements. Now it is the spend that’s being trimmed. Judge for yourself from the officialspeak: “Johnson & Johnson is conducting a global agency review and consolidation to build greater value and deliver innovative and fully integrated solutions for our consumer brands.” Well, they wouldn’t want less innovative solutions would they? And they could hardly be less fully integrated than they are at the moment.

In truth, there’s an easy win here for the new kid on the block, Michael Sneed – who became J&J’s top marketing (and PR) officer at the beginning of this year. There could hardly be a less efficient way of running your global marketing services than the one that exists at the moment. Uncle Tom Cobbleigh and All are at the advertising trough. It would be simpler to name a global marcoms group that isn’t on the roster.

WPP has business through JWT and AKQA; Publicis Groupe through Razorfish; Interpublic through Deutsch, Lowe, The Martin Agency and R/GA; Omnicom through DDB and BBDO; and Havas through Euro RSCG. That leaves, er, Dentsu and MDC off the list.

Sneed is a company lifer who, at various stages of his J&J career, has shown considerable sensitivity towards advertising creativity. It will be interesting to see whether this natural instinct gets overridden by the all-powerful imperative of saving the company money. Don’t expect a self-aggrandising Ewanick moment – Sneed seems too modest for that. Do expect a financial deal, of the “Team WPP” or more likely “Commonwealth” variety, that dresses up financial expediency as a coherent creative solution.

The most interesting thing about this review may be the losers. If Interpublic is among them, perhaps group CEO Michael Roth will at last seek to do a deal with Publicis Groupe. The air is certainly thick with rumours to that effect at the moment.

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