When WPP is beset by storm clouds – with the occasional thunderstorm dumping its load – the only thing its agencies can do is get on with business.
Key to this are obviously WPP Media – in good times its biggest profit driver – and its two big creative agencies VML and Ogilvy. We’ve yet to see the fall-out at WPP Media (if there’s going to be one) following Cindy Rose’s elevation to WPP CEO. Ogilvy seems to be have had a vote of confidence in its former global CEO Devika Bulchandani being elevated to WPP COO – despite cutbacks in project work there being cited as one reason for WPP’s recent disastrous profit warning – while there is a huge amount riding on VML, which now contains the residue of storied brands JWT, Y&R and Wunderman. At the time of the mergers VML was said to be the biggest creative agency in the world in terms of head count.
So far VML seems to have acquitted itself reasonably well and now it’s succeeded in landing Pizza Hut, one of Yum Brands’ bigger yums despite its rather tattered image in the UK, from IPG’s Deutsch. VML bagged a place on the Pizza Hut roster for below-the-line work last year and now it’s won the lot, another sign of big clients consolidating work if they can.
Creative may not be the money driver it once was but it still provides the flagship communication for brands, the kind of thing investors, CEOs, chairmen (and their wives according to legend) notice. Arthur Sadoun, boss of currently all-conquering Publicis, observed a while back that, for really big brands, there would soon be only three real competitors: Publicis, the merged Omnicom/IPG and WPP, still big despite its travails. But for the big three (who may be joined by Havas if it succeeds in crafting a deal for Dentsu’s international business) creative still needs to measure up, even if it’s a loss leader while the money comes from media.
Publicis, despite its much vaunted ‘Power of One,’ has kept most of its agency brands. It’s also recently established LePub – described as a “new agency model where brands meet culture at the intersection of data, creativity and tech” -sitting on top of its agency brands and gaggle of client-specific units on big global wins like Santander. It may look rather messy in comparison to the seemingly leaner WPP but, so far, it seems to work better. BBH in the US and UK appears to be thriving (although the holdco’s don’t publish numbers for agency brands.)
VML’s Pizza Hut win, a big deal in the US, may be a sign that WPP can fight back on at least one front. Cindy Rose’s next big challenge – law suits in the US excepted – is WPP Media, now the home of once standalone EssenceMediacom, Mindshare and Wavemaker. WPP Media boss Brian Lesser was a Mark Read ally. We wait to see if anything happens there.
