Johnny Hornby’s agency has had an interesting nomenclature, beginning life as Clemmow Hornby Inge (Clemmow and Inge were planners and creatives respectively), becoming CHI & Partners and then, somehow, The&Partnership. This morphed into T&Pm when its M/Six Media was absorbed into the creative agency to go officially full service (M/Six had various iterations too.) Now it’s to be rebranded as just T&P.
It’s now wholly owned by WPP. WPP bought 49.9% in 2007, a move that greatly benefitted a number of bank accounts including that of minor shareholder Peter (now Lord) Mandelson. Since then Hornby and co. have built a substantial business on flagship accounts including British Gas, News International and Toyota’s integrated business in Europe.
WPP is rather fond of rebranding, as many of its agencies know to their cost: GroupM, its media operation, is now plain WPP Media leading some to think it’s only a matter of time before the rest becomes WPP Creative although Ogilvy, which has remained arguably the strongest creative brand in holding company adland, might demur.
Hornby himself (above), rather than heading for the hills and his other business interests (he’s a partner in Jeremy Clarkson’s beer business and wife Clare has a growing fashion empire) is staying on at T&P but also taking on a new role as head of WPP’s Specialist Communications division, a veritable gaggle of agencies including design (Sir Martin Sorrell kicked off WPP by buying design agencies in the 1980s, before an under-priced JWT caught his eye.) Leading to speculation that Hornby might be a possible successor to current CEO Mark Read one day. Why is Hornby taking on Specialist Communications (a pretty thankless task on the face of it) if this isn’t the case, people ask.
It’s an intriguing prospect. Hornby (left) also finds himself joined in the upper echelons of WPP by James Murphy, now sitting atop Ogilvy Group in the UK after selling his New Commercial Arts to WPP. Hornby and Murphy were both in the same group of graduate trainees at Ogilvy before fame and fortune beckoned.
One doubts that anyone, including new chairman Philip Jansen, knows what WPP’s top management is going to look like by the end of the year. The group has besetting problems: its turnover per head is much lower than rivals including Omnicom and Publicis and that’s surely the next problem to fix (firing lots of people may not be the answer.)
But Hornby will surely play a role, maybe as one of the king-makers or even king.
