WPP’s JWT network (or is that J. Walter Thompson once again?) is collecting all its digital agencies together and calling them Mirum.
Mirum includes HeathWallace, Quirk and ActivearkJWT in the UK, Digitaria and Lunchbox in the US, XM in Asia Pacific, CASA and i-Cherry in Brazil, Quirk in South Africa and X-Prime in France. The chief honcho at the new network seems to be US boss Dan Khabie from Digitaria.
As such it adds to a baffling array of WPP or WPP-related networks. WPP already has Possible Worldwide, which is another collection of digital agencies WPP boss Sir Martin Sorrell has picked up on his shopping expeditions.
There’s currently a big debate going on in adland – or marketing land – about all these specialist units and how they make a client’s job much more difficult. By the time he or she has liaised with a dozen or so agencies there isn’t much time to do anything else.
AMV BBDO in the UK, for example, has set its face against such multiple offerings and runs its digital work through the main agency.
So we’ll have to see if Mirum works better for JWT. It would certainly make it easier to sell the agency if that ever crossed Sorrell’s, or anyone else’s, mind.
