Indies and Majors

I couldn't find much about Batman.  Last year Warner Bros. switched from WPP to Omnicom but that's about media-buying and planning-duties.  Does that mean they also control creative?

WPP is the world's largest advertising group, Omnicom is the second largest.

WPP gained the Warner Bros. account in 2004 when it acquired Grey Global Group, but last year MediaCom (the WPP agency who led the Warner account) not only lost Warner, but also a 1.4 billion dollar account for GlaxoSmithKline.

I may pick up the story of MediaCom on a later blog, to see whether they have made up any ground after last year's failures.

I've started to learn a little more about the independent / holding group dynamic.  Holding groups don't seem that popular with advertising journalists. They gobble up any creative agency whenever they get the chance.

Omnicom just bought Adam and Eve, the agency behind well-received campaigns for Foster's and John Lewis.

Adam + Eve are/were a new agency, founded in 2008 by David Golding, James Murphy and Ben Priest - all former RKCR/Y&R (WPP) Execs, as well as Jon Forsyth from Naked Comms.  In addition to Fosters and John Lewis, A&E have also done work for Sony, The Telegraph, Google Plus and Youtube.

The acquisition by WPP means the agency will be integrated into DBB, with many of the management roles going to A&E execs.  The new agency will also integrate DDB Tribal, and will be renamed Adam & Eve / DDB.  DDB has struggled in recent times, despite strong support from VW.  DDB has recently lost accounts from Phillips and Virgin Media.

I saw an interesting piece of advertising by VW which I assume DDB Tribal took the lead on.  It's a really interesting idea with excellent use of PPC ad placements - but if the ad-explaining-the-ad hadn't been blogged about, I would never have spotted it.  Then again, PPC placements are very cost-efficient and I've not seen anything like it before, so I have to say that I think they really did a fantastic job with this one.

I'll end as I've got in the habit of doing: by highlighting a great ad that I came across (another ad which got a lot of love on Reddit). This was by AlMapBBDO for Getty Images.  I'll hopefully have a bit more info on it tomorrow!

Bis morgen