First off, it’s also an Omnicom venture of course as Colin Gottlieb, boss of Omnicom media operations in EMEA, has bought an OMG stake in the business.
But Eric Newnham, the former Kinetic boss and clearly a man who never sleeps, has been busy hiring anyone he can from Kinetic these past few months, latterly research boss Nick Mawditt. Mawditt told Brand Republic back in February that he “welcomed the competition” from Talon. Now, of course, the competition has welcomed him.
Quite what WPP boss Sir Martin Sorrell makes of all this only he knows for sure but that the odds are that he’s not pleased, as his Kinetic staff ship out. Aegis’s Posterscope has also come under the Newnham cosh and this week former Posterscope COO Steve Bond also joined Talon; increasing the pressure on Posterscope clients to move.
So what most people thought was a duopoly in the UK outdoor market has now actually become a four-way fight with Talon joining the fray and IPG’s Rapport, headed by former Saatchi media exec Roy Jeans, also competing away. Rapport has the UK’s two biggest poster clients, BSkyB and Samsung.
The only mystery, to date, is the ‘new’ way of working that all the newcomers, and indeed Gottlieb, say attracted them to Talon.
At the moment it looks rather like an old way of working – Kinetic’s.
