OK... Back to the Dell shoot-out. It would seem after seven fucking months, Dell has decided not to go with a BDA (Big Dumb Agency) but with a BDC (Big Dumb Conglomerate.) I am not quite sure of the reasoning behind this. But Corporate America has always seemed to me to be, paraphrasing Winston Churchill - "A disaster, wrapped in a fuck up, run by cretins." Or something like that. I worked on the Dell account for both Chiat and GMO when I lived in California, and I always thought Michael Dell was a pretty smart guy. But this decision completely mystifies me... And believe me, Michael is the guy that still makes the big decisions. He could have done what Lou Gerstener did when he took over IBM and put everything into one shop, O&M, a shop he trusted, 'cos he'd worked with them before and they did good work for him. He didn't fuck around with a seven month shoot out. He just did it... 'Cos that's what he was all about (Which is what Michael Dell used to be all about!) On the other hand, he could have done a Philippe Kahn, (a la Borland) and brought the whole thing in house. The work would suck, but the cost efficiencies would have been great. Now, Dell is going to get the worst of both worlds... The work will still suck, 'cos everyone will be working at a "One-Client-Who-Pays-Your-Salary-Baby-Agency." And the money will be lyposuctioned out by the "Poisoned Dwarf's" Dyson-Like extraction machine. The whole thing is a complete mystery to me. The only good thing about it is, as I said in my pre-cocktail post, Interpublic is now royally screwed. Those bozos had been hanging their fucking hats on winning this. I would love to be a fly on the wall when at the next board meeting, Michael Roth is explaining to all those fuckers why "The New Paradigm in The Agency of the Fucking Millennium," is well and truly fucked. Now we can look forward to what was described in today's AdAge by Casey Jones (wasn't he a fucking train driver?) VP-Global Marketing, Emperor Douchenozzle, Dell, Galactic, Whatever... As "The Greatest Agency in the World!" I give it two years max!!!
OK, so in two years when the gnome-shit hits the fan, we buy IPG for 5 cents on the dollar, Roth kisses my ass, and Draft/FCB sinks without a fucking trace. What's wrong with that?