Commentary

Media X: The Parent Problem

Can't sleep? You don't need a pill. Just listen to pundits and players pontificate about the media agency business. It's aural Ambien. Also -- trust me on this -- a great way to bring yourself down from a manic Adderol high.

But now, finally, we've got ourselves a media-agency melodrama worth paying attention to. It's an inspirational tale of how a boy named Nick grew up to be the master of the Interpublic media domain. Like the story of how Genghis Khan overran the world, only without the smelly long-haired ponies and blood-encrusted daggers.

I don't know why former Universal McCann chief Nick Brien even bothered to call his new Interpublic media group Mediabrands. Nobody's buying that bullshit. This is Year One of The Brien Empire, and we all know it. (Somewhere in a badly lit pub, McCann WorldGroup honcho and former IPG CEO John Dooner is rubbing his hands and cackling.)

Look, I'd be the first to applaud if the perennial also-ran of holding company media services groups finally found a formula for lasting success. You have no idea how tiresome it is writing about how great GroupM and Publicis Media Groupe are day after day, year after year.

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I could sure use some real, honest-to-God competition. But there's really nothing else that can challenge those two. Interpublic's last attempt, the unlamented Interpublic Media, was too pathetic to be called a joke. Over at Omnicom Media Group, PHD is Chrysler's struggling slave, mostly, and it just lost its leader, Matt Seiler, to the new emperor's old job at Universal McCann.

The best thing you can say about PHD's big sister OMD: It's big.

So I wish Interpublic's new media emperor well. And he's got the nucleus of an intriguing group of warlords. I only met Seiler once, right after he took over PHD. He talked and acted like a second-tier David Verklin, which isn't necessarily a bad thing. Initiative global CEO Richard Beaven, a Starcom MediaVest Group alumnus like Brien, is a pretty smart guy. So Brien's got "thinkers" at the helm of both of his major media brands, which is a competitive imperative in today's marketplace.

But don't hold your breath. This holding company has never -- I mean never -- understood the immense potential a strong, powerful and truly independent media operation offers.

Unlike their counterparts at other holding companies, Interpublic's leaders don't really support the concept of independent media services. Dooner, in particular, very publicly despised the whole idea of unbundling. And Interpublic's creative units -- Deutsch springs immediately to mind -- are relentless in their efforts to bring back the 20th century and rebundle media, at least the planning part, into their shops.

Until very recently when it started winning business again, Initiative was treated worse by its corporate family than Cinderella was treated by her stepsisters. As for Universal McCann, it's still McCann-Erickson's bitch, and that's not likely to change.

And don't even get me started on Magna.

I'd like to see Mediabrands flourish. But nothing Brien does will matter if his corporate parent doesn't finally wise up.

Now that's something I'd stay awake to see.

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