Regardless of efforts at consolidation, conventional company holdcos stay fragmented on the within and infrequently complicated to entrepreneurs on the surface.
WPP’s current company reorgs are traditional examples of this phenomenon.
In 2018, WPP merged inventive companies VML and Younger & Rubicam to create VMLY&R. Two years later, WPP mixed its shopper advertising company, Geometry, with VMLY&R to create a standalone commerce-focused enterprise that operates as a separate entity inside the broader VMLY&R community.
Then, final week, WPP blended VMLY&R with one other of its inventive companies, Wunderman Thompson, to (re)create VML, which can now concentrate on model expertise, buyer expertise and commerce. (Acquired it?)
These aren’t unhealthy strikes. Reducing down the variety of companies below a single roof is “a sound technique,” says Nick Emery, CEO of Brandtech Group-owned digital company Jellyfish, talking on this week’s episode of AdExchanger Talks.
Emery has a variety of perception into the company holding firm mannequin after spending greater than 20 years as the worldwide CEO of WPP media company Mindshare.
The issue with intra-holdco company mergers is much less about what they do and extra about what they don’t do, Emery says.
“It doesn’t put inventive and media again collectively. It doesn’t essentially have an open supply answer for shoppers. And I’m unsure scale can be a important benefit in the case of creativity,” he says.
After leaving WPP round three years in the past, Emery joined a special sort of holding firm, The Brandtech Group (previously You & Mr Jones), as a founding associate.
The Brandtech Group positions itself as a tech holding firm, moderately than an company holding firm, that makes use of expertise to boost creativity. Since 2016, Brandtech has made 11 acquisitions, together with fifty-five (information and tech consulting), Oliver (in-housing providers), Collectively (influencer tech), Pencil (GenAI for adverts) and Jellyfish.
When the Jellyfish deal closed in June, Emery took over the CEO position. Although Jellyfish is below the Brandtech umbrella, its sister corporations are by no means assured to get looped in on work when shoppers come knocking.
“Operating an organization is all the time about, hopefully, marrying the wants of the person with the wants of the corporate, and I feel there’s nonetheless an excessive amount of self-interest in a enterprise that’s meant to be about shopper service,” Emery says. “What I feel makes us completely different is that we actually put the shopper’s pursuits on the coronary heart of what we do.”
Additionally on this episode: The distinction between efficiency advertising and advertising efficiency, a behind-the-scenes take a look at Brandtech Group’s acquisition technique, the position of generative AI in media and advertising (minus the hype) and the place the identify “GroupM” got here from. (Spoiler: Emery had just a little one thing to do with it.)
For extra articles that includes Nick Emery, click on right here.
