According to yesterday's AdAge, WPP has finally crept ahead of Omnicom to become the world's largest ad conglomerate. Perfect timing... Just as the ad biz is descending into the pit, with forecasts that ad spends will be down as much as 20% in the next year, and WPP carrying a staggering debt load, some of which is due to be paid back in the middle of a severe recession that has every chance of turning into a depression any time now. Even fucktard, Interpublic, which hasn't thrown a profit since Rome conquered Gaul, carries less than a quarter of WPP's debt. In the "No one learns from the mistakes of history" column, you would think that Sir Martin would remember what caused the downfall of his previous employers. It wasn't just Maurice and Charlie's insatiable appetite for Concord, castles and cars. It was the fact that they kept buying non-advertising companies on borrowed money and lost sight of what business they were actually in. Eventually, the shareholders said "Fuck it, you're out." As a WPP shareholder (FIVE shares) I'm telling "His Gnomeship" to watch it!
Ah... The good old days. When we ruled the world!
Quite honestly, if I was still at a WPP company and I had some accumulation in the various retirement plans under their stewardship, I would be very afraid. Very afraid. But as a refugee like many others, I have exited the shopping cart and cashed out my retirements. Worried frankly, for all my friends who remain.
Posted by: red_refugee | March 10, 2009 at 09:05 AM
yay. the WPP handbasket to hell just got that much bigger....
Posted by: the lower depths | March 10, 2009 at 09:18 AM
Any new business pitches going on these days?
Posted by: Been there | March 10, 2009 at 09:44 AM
Appropos of nothing. I just noticed what a total piece of shit the DFCB web site really is! It's SHIT!
Posted by: I.V. Dripp | March 10, 2009 at 12:56 PM
Those who can't, manage ad agencies. It takes Ogilvy weeks to write a simple line of copy. Pretty soon, AEs will be in different operating units than their Account Sups and they'll have to issue a PO thru Project Mgt to talk to each other. Well, after they issue a PO to Project Mgt to be able to talk to them. Fuck Ogilvy. They are a bloated, dying whale who couldn't make any sense if they had a gun to their dwarf head.
Posted by: Anonymouse | March 10, 2009 at 01:54 PM
a short while ago, account directors (at ogilvy) became project managers, implying that they had some working knowledge of HOW the work gets from the AD's screen to the magazine in your hands (or whatever media) and effectively dropping a lot of unqualified people into the deep end of the pool. they tried this to combine management and production.
more work has now gotten pooched than ever before and more money has been lost...
how's that for "perpetual beta"?
Posted by: the lower depths | March 10, 2009 at 02:08 PM
As we speak, Westre and crew are shooting yet another round of that "I'm an IBM-er" stuff for the Masters. The hushed tones with which they speak of the importance of said work captures in an instant why they can't win a new piece of biz to save their vested lives.
Posted by: theinsider | March 10, 2009 at 04:28 PM
theinsider...
I wonder how many times IBM, and Apple before that, have paid for Susan to fly the Atlantic, rather than be based in New York... And we all know why that will never happen.
Cheers/George
Posted by: George Parker | March 10, 2009 at 04:43 PM
i think westre has been based here for a while... there may have been an arrangement made?
but as for the work? junior level, "look at me, i have a huge budget" type stuff... can anyone remember the last IBM spot they saw that actually said something without just jumping on some bandwagon or other?
Posted by: the lower depths | March 10, 2009 at 05:45 PM