Why the model is broken...

Having worked at 4 of the 6 holding companies in my career, I think that maybe the WPP may be one of the better models, however with the news of the mergers a few days ago, it shows that they are struggling with too many brands trying to make the revenue numbers work, hence the brands like Y&R, JWT and Wunderman are now in the history books.

Publicis Groupe they are under siege as the brands they own, some have lost luster, others have not gotten up to speed in innovation and yet others have been laid to rest. They have fought to keep key accounts but in order to do one martech deal I recall calling on 4-5 different groups that worked with one client...

Interpublic Group (IPG) had it mostly right and then came IPG Mediabrands that when I was at UMWW-NYC confused most of us, and especially our clients as now we had to use "partner agencies" for vertical work (Reprise and others). Once again they have just folded three into one as that model needed to be more efficient.

In my last holding company sojourn Omnicom Media Group they are now folding all agencies into the holding so that they are 100% owned which can be seen as the first step to creating back office efficiencies and lower costs, or as WPP and IPG did - fold low performing agencies (low performing to what a board expects in shareholder value, not work performance) into a higher margin business.

So this leads into my musing of higher margin yield. For us that were fans of the TV show Madmen - the purists were all about the growing business by growing accounts through - you guessed it, better ads. Better creative, better service and yes, better relationships. Performance as David Ogilvy would say was judged on the "money in the cash register" and hence most Ogilvy offices had a cash register at the entrance, as advertising was to move consumers to buy a product or service.

Then came Martin Sorrel...yes he revolutionized the industry, but since then what have we given up? My friend Marcelo Salup can be a great source of knowledge and one of the things I have learned from him is that - we must do great work, but its work that will help a client grow. What ever the client sees as success, if its lead generation, sales, demand generation, content distribution, its to build success.

Marco Vega always reminded me that good work is because what we do is in behalf of the brand. Brands matter. Sil Curiati would do this great planning exercise at Ogilvy Brasil on brand ambition, and with Duda Guerra I would discuss this in depth...and that is when it hit me - a full agency can do all that, and not be held to each P/L of each sub-brand to try to be profitable from the one client requirement. If a client has 1MM for a specific requirement, you cant have creative separate from digital, separate from media, that is separate from planning and strategy. And this is the tip of the iceberg...maybe we are going back to one idea, one agency...or at least I hope so. I see great work from ISLA and my friends at GUT and DAVID São Paulo , and so I know that we can be make the advertising great with Cheil Worldwide and I am happy to be in this home.

Thank you for your thoughts on our ever-changing landscape.