The White Agency and Grey Group Australia rebrand as whiteGREY
WPP’s The White Agency and Grey Group Australia have merged as whiteGrey.
The rebrand formalises a relationship which began in November, when the two agencies merged into combined office spaces in WPP’s Sydney and Melbourne offices.
One team: Worboys (left) and Joyce
This is th exact reason why the monkeys and accenture thing is so exciting.
What?
what does this mean?
Pale Grey
Wasn’t the 1st April last month?
50 shades of white and greyness?
A whiter shade of grey?
Does anyone over there expect to be taken seriously with this announcement?
Either run an agency with some semblance of credibility or go run The Onion.
Straight from the usual playbook. I wish there was a bit more originality and intelligence to the STW (oops WPP) press releases.
Step 1: Move agencies into the same location, typically a weaker agency shares with a stronger one.
Step 2: Merge the P&L for both, not “officially” but for all intents and purposes. Of course, to employees you talk about this stage the importance of maintaining both brands.
Step 3: Mike announces to the market that merging the agencies to create a better offering that the clients are asking for. In fact, it means headcount reduction across the business to get those “efficiencies” though sell it internally as shifting resources to make the agency stronger overall.
Step 4: Within 2 years eradicate one of the agencies completely, typically with the leader of one of the agencies managed out after the first12 months.
Step 5: Then blame the market conditions for lack of organic growth in order to keep CEO job.
Step 6: It all goes to shit. Merge and repeat.
Thing I am wrong? Search STW on this site. Zoe, what about more journalism and recount the history of this STW manoeuvre, would be of a lot of interest to us shareholders.
Bring back GayJrey!
Michael Jackson.
Enero stole that playbook!
Best of luck to all involved, but LOL at joint-CEOs.
You’ve got to make the hard calls early. And deciding on joint-CEOs isn’t doing that.
STWPP is rumoured to have considered these other mergers in the past ;
Grey Tongue
GreyMindShare
Tongue@Ogilvy
WhiteGreyY&R
Added Tongue Value
HeyGrey
Hill + Tongue Strategies
GreyHuman
MaverickTongue
GreyPlay
WhiteWunderman
TheGreyAgency
Greyworks
Someone should build a STWPP agency consolidation tool as a web service. The shareholders would love it.
Jeez, I hope they buy Lavender. Oh, and the Red Agency. What about Blue Hive?
Blue Hive is no longer. GTB now
WPP Spends a lot of money on signage and stationery. Who said print is dead?
seems like a strange move – rebranding definitely on the cards at some future stage.
Lighter grey perhaps?
With the creativity demonstrated by the new name we look forward to the garage sale.
Within 2yrs the White folks will be gone and they will rebrand back to Grey. Take it from a person who worked in digital agencies for 15yrs. The digital ship has sailed and it’s happened very quickly. Salesforce, Shopify, Wix and many more tools plus Social media have killed bespoke builds. Everything is digital, and if you are a creative agency, that doesn’t consider a digital idea, you wouldn’t still be around. In the end the creative idea trumps all. All my developer mates are hurting. Watch this space for more digital agencies getting swallowed or shutting shop.