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PubliCom posers for WPP’s SMS, Publicis outdoor on its way to Talon, drink more Herbert Hall…

The great Publicom merger posts a number of interesting questions for Sir Martin Sorrell and WPP.

The first is: WPP’s strategy has always been to be the biggest and now it no longer is – across the piece.

So fund managers looking to invest in the great worldwide advertising and media boom (yes, there is one despite the way it sometimes seems in Europe) may now longer automatically buy WPP, hitherto a kind of global ad investment trust.

WPP is still probably the biggest in media, which is where the action is.

But it’s a problem for SMS (left). He might also find it rather difficult to cling on to the Cannes Lions holding company of the year gong next time around as a vengeful Omnicom-owned BBDO and Publicis Groupe’s Saatchi, Burnett and Publicis conspire against him.

***Publicis Groupe doesn’t have a global out-of-home agency as WPP has with Kinetic, Dentsu/Aegis has with Posterscope and Interpublic has with rapport. PG looked at it a few years ago and decided not to do it, which now looks like a missed opportunity.

Omnicom is the sleeping partner in Eric Newnham’s new Talon OOH contender. If PG’s outdoor business finds its way to Eric then that will really set the cat amongst the pigeons.

***We rather overlooked this latest effort, ‘Hands,’ from Wieden+Kennedy London for Honda, originally idents for a sponsored Channel 4 drama stream. Now there’s a full film and very clever it is too – and popular, five million YouTube hits.

This campaign has everything but….there’s not enough of it, it comes and goes. And it has a great line for Honda: ‘The Power of Dreams.’

But do you dream of a Honda? Maybe it’s not the ads, it’s the product.

***There are lots of reprobates in and around advertising and I’m happy to name my former colleague and friend Nick Hall as one of them. Nick used to work at Marketing Week and then went to Grey only to surface most recently as the maker of a very fine English sparkling wine called Herbert Hall, named after his grandfather I believe.

Here’s Nick accepting yet more compliments about his wonderful hand-crafted potion.

The boy done well.

***Apologies to all those people who’ve sent in stories about interesting things this past week only to discover that we’ve been obsessed with PubliCom. But it is big.

***Now I’m off to watch the incredibly wonderful BBC 4’s programme about Fairport Convention, a fantastic late Sixties folkie band (never quite the same after brilliant singer Sandy Denny died). BBC 4 is what telly should be all about but it’s just had its budget cut and been brought under the wing of boring old BBC 2.

Who know where the time (and common sense) goes?

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