“How big do we need to be before we get bad?” the late Jay Chiat, co-founder of what is now TBWA\Chiat\Day once asked. (There’s much to thank Chiat, co-founder Guy Day – the two were writers – and great art director Lee Clow for but, not, maybe their punctuation here, which still baffles many of us.)
Clow (left) and Chiat
So what would Chiat make of a merged TBWA and DDB if that, indeed, is what Omnicom is planning post its merger with IPG? DDB and the original Chiat\Day have much in common, being in part products of the amazing generation of Jewish talent who more or less reinvented US creative advertising in the 1960s and beyond. Under Omnicom they’ve had mixed fortunes: TBWA\Chiat\Day (with Clow in the van most of the time) still handles Apple 41 years after its legendary ‘1984’ commercial, directed by Ridley Scott. DDB has fallen from grace rather, being bigger in Chicago than home territory NYC and currently looking to the Brits at adam&eveDDB to revive it.
The mooted TBWA/DDB merger (or should that be TBWA\DDB or DDB\TBWA?) is reckoned to be part of a wider reshuffle that will see Omnicom’s BBDO remain as is as will IPG’s McCann with IPG’s FCB and Mullen Lowe merging (they’re already sharing some functions in the UK.) On the face of it, it looks quite sensible as there isn’t as much money (for holding companies anyway) in creative any more and cost cuts (job losses) are part of the sell to Wall Street. It’s certainly tidier than WPP’s reorganisation that saw JWT, Wunderman and Y&R (which cost it $4bn back in the day) folded into VML, leaving WPP execs scratching their heads even as they exited the building.
Sorting out the details in the UK, if the mergers go through, will be the devil of a job. For the IPG side it’s simpler in the sense that neither FCB or Mullen Lowe are especially big. The Lowe part is a shadow of the agency that once ruled the creative roost and, briefly, had ambitions to steer the then Interpublic. Mullen Lowe just never sounded right anyway.
TBWA and DDB in London include, for TBWA, Lucky Generals (which is somewhat outperforming its big brother) alongside the aforementioned adam&eveDDB, now with an outpost in New York. Alex Lubar, who once ran McCann in London which is handy, is global CEO of DDB and, presumably, the architect of the attempt to expand adam&eve. Troy Ruhanen from TBWA is now grand supremo of the recently-established Omnicom Advertising Group (OAG.) Whoever gets the task of sorting this out will have a job on their hands with, potentially, a lot to loose as well as gain.
What Jay Chiat would have made of it all we know not – although it’s not hard to guess.
