Amid all the chatter about who’s handling Coca-Cola media one important thing seems to have been overlooked. If you’re setting up a bespoke agency for a major client then you have to be pretty certain the deal’s going to last and, in the case of WPP and Coke, it didn’t.
The deal whereby WPP handled all of the Coke was struck nearly five years ago (a fair time admittedly) but a major part of the business (probably the most profitable) Coke’s North America media exited for Publicis just over a year ago, now in review again after Publicis landed Pepsico with Dentsu and Omnicom reportedly pitching and WPP nowhere to be seen. WPP may still land Coke’s global media business, for a period anyway.
It all looked a rather fishy when it emerged that Laurent Ezekiel, then WPP’s client lead on Coke, was leaving for….Publicis. He was persuaded back with the role of CEO at Ogilvy (in effect the main Coke creative agency) but all the happy, smiley pics of the Ogilvy team couldn’t disguise that this looked a bit rum.
When Pepsi came knocking on Publicis boss Arthur Sadoun’s door was the fact that Pepsi had stayed with Omnicom for 17 years a factor? Coke doesn’t look anything like as stable.
