• by Richard Whitman , Columnist, November 21, 2013

So Publicis 4D has lost the $800 million Disney movie media account. It was handed to Omnicom's OMD without a review. Which, from the highest level, doesn't really matter since Publicis is now hooking up with Omnicom. And when you toss in the fact 4D staffers who worked on the account will simply shift to OMD, the move seems even stranger. Hey, I don't claim to know how to run a holding company and there must be a good reason for moving $800 million across the hallway but this whole thing seems more like an office redesign than an account shift. Some background. When the brand held a review in 2011, it split its $1 billion media account in two, handing the movie business to Publicis and the theme parks business to Carat. To win (and, in holding company speak, keep) the movie business--which, for ten years had been handled by Publicis Groupe's Starcom (which did not defend)--Publicis formed 4D. OMD was in that pitch as well. And now all parties are part of one big, happy POG family. Former enemies can now reunite and any unique qualities they might once have had will blend into the fold. It's kind of like Warren Beatty who, in an attempt to mitigate racial tensions in the move “Bulworth,” said, "If we all f&#cked each other we'd eventually end up the same color." That kinda seems like what's going on in the ad business these days. And, despite Beatty's goal in “Bulworth,” I'm not sure it's a good thing for the industry. Differences are healthy. Differences fuel insight. Differences spawn competition. omogenization leads to lazy, bland indifference. 

As the line between earned and paid media becomes ever more blurry, it makes perfect sense for PR giant Edelman to jump into the paid media space with the hire of Publicis Groupe's Audience on Demand Manager Chris Paul. The past few years have been filled with various gurus extolling the myriad virtues of of earned and owned media thanks to the growth of social media. But earned and owned can only go so far. Companies like OneSpot which magically turns earned and owned media into paid media ad units that can be proliferated across ad networks and exchanges is just one transformation we are seeing in the earned, owned and paid media space. Another is a return to good old fashioned media buying to spread marketer's messages further than is possible with earned and owned alone. Paul's mindset aligns well with Edelman's. He told Advertising Age, "One of the last things I was working on in my media-agency life was building a real-time marketing and communications capability. I'm a big believer in it. I want to work with an agency that has a heritage in real-time connection, and work from that lens out--media helps amplify that--versus starting with broadcast the way media has done historically."

Martin Sorrell is never going to sit on his laurels as the Publicis Omnicom merger goes down. No siree. The man will be on top again if he has his way. And if he isn't running out this very minute to hook up with Interpublic, he's certainly working on slow growth through small acquisitions. His latest, which comes through one of his digital shops, VML, is US-based digital advertising and marketing agency Biggs| Gilmore. It's VML's third acquisition this year following IM2.0 in China and NATIVE in South Africa. It's part of his plan to increase revenue from "fast growth" markets and new media to 40-45% over the next five years.

I'm not sure I'd really want to work on an account like Terminex. After all, when you take on a new account, you need to take a deep dive into the client's business and get to know their market, their customers and their business model. But when your business model consists of killing termites and pests, well, let's just say I wouldn't be all that excited about taking a deep dive into that sort of cauldron of squirminess. Anyway, Terminex has canned Publicis Dallas after six years and is shifting its business to Havas Chicago. 

Did you know that according to a survey of 18,000 social media profiles by dating app Hinge, the hottest people in New York work in media and advertising? According to the survey, Facebook and MediaVest house the hottest men and women. Weber Shandwick and DigitasLBi also made the list. I mean really, this is no surprise. All you have to do is visit an ad agency or go to an industry event and you are surrounded by sizzling hotness you simply can't find in any other industry.

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