Interesting piece in the Wall Street Journal today about different units within WPP, from the creative and media side, competing against each other.The paper picks up on WPP's media buying network Mediaedge's move to branch out from buying online media to helping clients build internet marketing operations and compares this with Ogilvy & Mather going full service on the digital front by buying oline media.On the Mediaedge side it cites the launch last year of Mediaedge's Paris-based creative agency called Arthur Schlovsky - a fictional founder - and quotes Mark Read, WPP's head of strategy as saying that "the lines are blurring, and there is experimentation, particularly in digital around the edges".
Last month Mediaedge expanded Arthur Schlovsky into Germany and hired the executive creative director of Omnicom's BBDO Dusseldorf, Ralf Zilligen, as chairman. It has created a biographical film in 1940s-newsreel style crediting its make-believe founder with inventing merchandising and product placement.
Interestingly, the piece also said that Mediaedge had initially wanted to buy established digital ad agencies to do this rather than launch Arthur Schlovsky, but that was vetoed by Read.Over at Ogilvy it has Neo@Ogilvy, which it set up back in 2006 and is now a much bigger affair, to buy online putting up against Mediaedge's MEC Interaction unit. Last year Neo@Ogilvy's UK business grew about 25%, according to managing director Richard Wheaton, and this year it is expected to increase about 15%."WPP fosters and encourages this internal competition," Wheaton says.The danger for WPP is "duplication of effort and extra cost," says Chris Ingram, a co-founder of Mediaedge who is no longer with the firm. "It's like a land grab, and nobody has got any rules."
Sounds and feels like another of WPP's - unfocused service strategies.
Throw the *** at the fan and see who it splatters.
Gordon Macmillan
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