• by February 13, 2006

I'M OKAY, YOU'RE OK!, BUT WE'RE STILL NOT BUYING YOU, OKAY? -- At a time when big marketers are demanding assurances that their agencies are being completely objective when deciding what media to place their ads in, an untimely legal squabble between Martin Sorrell's WPP Group and a British publisher is providing a rare public view of just how cozy agencies sometimes get with the media they're responsible for buying. According to a story in today's edition of the U.K.' s Observer, Richard Desmond, publisher of OK! magazine is suing WPP for $5.5 million because WPP has not lived up to an alleged agreement that it would place an average of 15 advertising pages in the U.S. edition of the weekly magazine. The report says WPP's clients have averaged less than one page per issue since OK! launched in the U.S. in August.

The most interesting part of the report is the reason why WPP allegedly made the pledge: It was a condition of WPP's MediaCom unit winning OK!'s U.S. media account. If true, it means one of MediaCom's clients is reprimanding the agency for having something its other clients value highly: A little bit of spine. Or in Madison Avenue parlance: Remaining media neutral.

Desmond's Northern & Shell publishing company claims the damages are related to lost revenues and costs associated with WPP's pledge. We can imagine how such an agreement might be struck among big corporations in an era when mutual interdependence has been deemed a form of best practice for trading partners in many industries. Let's hope it's not one Madison Avenue is practicing. If it is, the implications are enormous.

Think about it? What would it mean if CBS, as a condition of its media account review, demanded the winning agency guarantee that the rest of the agency's clients heavy-up on the Tiffany Network during the 2006-07 upfront? And what if, NBC already made that condition of planning agency Fallon and buying shop Horizon Media? Or if the reason Wieden+Kennedy pulled the ABC media account out of its hat had something to do with placing Wieden's other clients in Alphabet City? Would Wieden be forced to place its newly won Old Spice account into ABC series like "Desperate Housewives?" or "Lost?"

And why stop there. Imagine if the media neutral shoe was placed on the other foot, and agencies forced the media to place their clients' brands into their programming or editorial content? What's that you say? They're already doing that? And it's called "branded entertainment?" Never mind.