by Herman Manson (@marklives) Quirk will retain its operational independence and current management, says agency founder and CEO, Rob Stokes, even after the conclusion of a deal with WPP, which will see the global communications group take a controlling interest in the digital agency. The deal is still subject to regulatory approval.
Tag archives: wpp
The agency boss who wants to hit the reset button on media
by Herman Manson (@marklives) New MEC Cape Town MD John Beale thinks media agencies are in deep deep trouble, what with a dysfunctional revenue model and an old school obsession with traditional paid-for media, and that they will be toast in five to ten years if lots of things don’t drastically change — such as their business model, positioning and offering.
AdForum Worldwide Summit: Publicis Omnicom merger “fatally flawed” — Sorrel
by Johanna McDowell. NEW YORK CITY: Day 2 of the 2013 AdForum Worldwide Summit started off with a taped message from Sir Martin Sorrell of WPP in response to key questions we were asking regarding the WPP group, as well as the potential impact of the Publicis Omnicom Group merger.
Grey closes Joburg agency, looks to buy another
by Herman Manson (@marklives) Grey Group, a WPP agency network, has closed its Johannesburg agency. No reason was given for the decision and the network has so far failed to clarify what happened with staff or clients. It also would not respond to an allegation in Business Day that the CEO of the agency, Derek Shorkey, had already left the country by the time news of the closure became public. Shorkey is listed as being in London on his Linkedin profile, which still lists him as CEO of the South African operation.
Owen Dougherty, Chief Communications Officer at Grey Group, says the network will regroup in South Africa and either acquire or build a new integrated agency, describing it as a key market.
“Grey is committed to Africa and has been increasing its footprint on the continent in recent years to meet rising demand from multinational and local clients,” reads a statement released by Grey Group. “Grey today is working across West and East Africa with a presence in 11 markets including Nigeria and Kenya.”
Mad Men to Math Men
by Herman Manson (@marklives) Mad Men to Math Men is where advertising has been heading for a while now, and the pace of transformation is only picking up Steven Plimsoll (@splimsoll), Chief Technology Officer at the WPP Data Alliance and at Mindshare Worldwide, told delegates at the recently held Acceleration Digital Ignition Symposium.
In case you don’t know, the WPP Data Alliance is a partnership between WPP companies “to connect diverse data to provide powerful, analytics-driven solutions for our clients.” This is where direct marketing meets media, says Plimsoll, who argues that the traditional adoption model used by many marketers is broken as consumers adapt communication technology at an unprecedented pace.
WPP, with its keen eye on shifts in marketing spend, and backed up by the findings of a 2012 Gartner report that says by 2017 the CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) will spend more on IT than the CIO, is investing in building data partnerships, like the one recently announced with Twitter, and going into client data strategy.
For the WPP Data Alliance every consumer interaction, across the various channels they make use of, becomes an opportunity to collect data on consumers. “Insight opportunities” extend from store openings to tweets, call center activity, online ratings and reviews, media preferences and more. Data sources include traditional market research, owned activity monitoring (own website, call centre activity etc), social monitoring and media intelligence.
Not a boom, real growth
By Herman Manson (@marklives) The African continent isn’t quite the growth honeypot ad agencies had been hoping for. That said – it’s certainly a growth market. While it doesn’t match the growth rates in Asia or even Latin America, listed agency networks seem to have decided any growth is good growth given the state of especially their European operations. North Africa remains fragile – ZenithOptimedia forecast only 1% growth in ad revenue in the Middle East & North Africa as political turmoil post the Arab Spring continues to rock the region. The company expects 2%-3% annual growth from 2013 to 2015.
Growth in adspend globally is predicted by ZenithOptimedia to hit 4.1% in 2013 and 5.6% in 2015. South Africa will be one of the top ten contributors to that growth between 2012 and 2015.
South Africa in the South, Kenya in the East and either Nigeria or Ghana in the West of Africa generally gets the most buzz from agencies seeking investment in the region.
Time for Sorrell to go
by Bob Hoffman. There is a small group of men who have ruined the advertising industry.
South Africa Top 4 revenue growth region for WPP
WPP has released its First Quarter Trading Statement for the three months ended 31 March 2013. Revenues in sterling up almost 6% at £2.532 billion. First quarter profits and operating margin were reported as above budget and well ahead of last year. Average net debt increased by £331m (-12%) to £3.015 billion. Net new business of $1.504 billion was acquired in the first quarter, compared to $1.855 billion in the first quarter last year.
Q1 2013 showed “a similar pattern to the final quarter of 2012 with strong like-for-like growth in Asia Pacific, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East and Central and Eastern Europe and advertising and media investment management and sub-sector direct, digital and interactive,” the group reports.
In terms of revenue growth by country Argentina grew by more than 20% followed by Brazil, South Africa and Thailand, all of whom achieved revenue growth of between 15-20%.
EXCLUSIVE: Top ECD leaves Ford Europe, joins one year old South African agency
by Herman Manson (@marklives) In a stunning coup for OFyt (Old Friends Young Talent) the agency, just over one year old, has announced that it has lured Greg Burke back to South Africa as ECD of its new Johannesburg office. Burke has been creative partner for O&M London’s Ford business since 2005 (as Executive Creative Director of Blue Hive London – the WPP agency that handles Ford in Europe). OFyt last week announced that it has won the Kia Motors South Africa account and that it will be run out of Johannesburg.
Burke spent 30 years in the South African advertising industry – mostly at Ogilvy/RS-TM – where he worked on VW (remember the David Kramer campaign for VW Bus?). Other accounts he has worked on as ECD at Ogilvy Cape Town included Carling Black Label, BP, Shell, WWF, Old Mutual, NSRI, Woolworths and Castrol.
OFyt currently employs 36 people. It expects to employ 12-14 people in Johannesburg once the office has been fully set up.
OFyt was launched last year by Jono Shubitz, a former ECD of Ogilvy Cape Town and chairman of OgilvyOne and Ogilvy Interactive SA; Gary Leih, a former group MD of Ogilvy South Africa, co-founder of ad agency The White House, chairman and CEO of Ogilvy Group UK and an Ogilvy Worldwide board director; and Paul Newman who, after a career in banking at Barclays in London and with Banque Nationale de Paris, served as marketing director at Nationwide before launching his own ad agency Amperzand.
Global agency groups find growth in digital, emerging markets
Financial results for the first quarter of 2011 from some of the world’s largest ad agency networks are showing rapid growth in emerging markets. Increasingly, agency networks expect their future, and future profits, to be tied in with markets outside the US or Western Europe. The stars of the show? China and Latin America. Digital spend, also in emerging markets, is driving quite a bit of the growth as well.