WPP: A case study in how not to do brand architecture
Mark Ritson takes a dim view of the announced WPP brand restructure that will see Ogilvy, VML and AKQA tied together within the organisation.
Ritson: Doing his bit to exacerbate the yoghurt shortage
In 1989, Martin Sorrell paid approximately $825 million for the Ogilvy Group. At the time it was the largest acquisition in advertising history, and he knew precisely what he was buying. Not the buildings, not the client list, not the staff. He was buying the name. A name that David Ogilvy had spent four decades building into the most recognisable brand in the agency business. Sorrell understood something that many of his successors apparently do not: agency brands are real brands, with real equity, and you pay real money for them.
This week, it emerged that Sorrell’s successors at WPP are folding Ogilvy, VML and AKQA into a single holding structure to be called, with the imaginative ambition of a government committee, “WPP Creative.” In surely the ultimate indignity of the modern ad era the greatest name in the history of advertising will be subsumed within a holding company named after a bankrupt wire shopping basket manufacturer.
The individual agency brands will reportedly remain intact. They will just sit under the new masterbrand like slightly embarrassed children at a school photo. The move has being positioned as strategic simplification. It is, in fact, a case study in how not to do brand architecture.
Brand architecture is one of those marketing concepts that sounds complicated but is actually straightforward. You have four choices with two essential extremes. You run a house of brands, where each brand stands alone with its own identity, its own positioning and its own equity. Procter and Gamble is the classic example. Tide doesn’t know it’s owned by P&G and neither do most consumers. Alternatively, you run a branded house, where a single masterbrand does the heavy lifting and everything else is a generic sub-aspect. Virgin is the obvious example. Virgin Money, Virgin Atlantic, Virgin Active. One brand, many expressions.
The glorification of “old advertising” in this article is very telling. It proves there’s still a narrative that romanticises the past instead of confronting the space advertising is actually in. The market, tech, budgets and clients have all changed. Legacy brand equity isn’t the pull it used to be, and can just as easily be read as slow, expensive and bloated, which it often is.
Keeping heritage brands means very little if it’s not paired with real change and forward thinking. This is why newer agencies are winning work: they’re leaner and faster. This merger might fail or it might not, but at least change is better than staying old and stagnant.
You can’t make this stuff up… 100% genuine response…
Hey ChatGTP. WPP want to merge their top three agencies, what should it be called…
Create a new holding creative marque.
If the goal is true consolidation and cultural reset, I would consider a new master name that implies scale and intelligence rather than a legacy surname.
I would recommend WPP Creative
Actually, you can make this stuff up. It doesn’t take a rocket scientist, or AI, to come up with WPP Creative.
Spot on Mark. It used to be that cost-saving CFOs drove the dumb-arse process of rationalising Agengy branding & structures…now we got the CEOs doing it! On reflection, I believe the whole Ad industry is degenerating at a faster and faster rate. How such leading brands such as J Walter Thompson, Wunderman Worldwide, Young & Rubicam and many others have been ‘retired’ is beyond me!
One only needs to see what’s happened at WPP Japan (VOJ) to see what’s coming here.
As an aside: there’s a critically-endangered Australian bird called the Regent Honeyeater. When young males weren’t able to learn from older mentors on how to sing the right song, they ended up singing other species’ songs, meaning they couldn’t attract the right partners and accelerating population decline.
As a business model, perhaps the holding company is going the same way.
The status quo is not working. The industry is in structural decline. They can’t do nothing and have no idea how to drive top line growth, so cost efficiencies it is.
Seems a lose lose move, when it could just have been an untold story of back end efficiencies.
Internal motivation loses.
Prospective buyer mental availability loses.
No to mention, the umpteen bloody syllables in WPP that you are supposed to say when addressing their brands. Now its WPP Media EssenceMediacom. 14 syllables! GTFOH.
…nobody says that
Come on, ease up on WPP. I think they have struck gold here.
If we can harness the energy, I think we could power Sydney just on George Patterson spinning in his grave. – let’s all remember WPP has a solid track record of “harnessing” great brands in this way… GPY&R, VMLY&R?!
Two consents…
First, brands are only worth something if the underlying business has value… creative is on the express train to oblivion… hold cos are feeling it more now but mid tier and indies will go the same way.
Second, brand architecture implies you have brands, not businesses. If agencies are brands, they should have a sales/ marketing director reporting into the hold co CEO… not separate C-suite, HR, finance etc… and their relative positioning should be set by the CMO.
Re: P&G. I have noticed in the past couple of years that Procter has begun to add (by their standards) a small P&G logo on the final frames of all their individual brands’ commercials. Add to that the corporate P&G sponsorship of the Olympics, and it looks like the behemoth is finally stepping out of the shadows.
I have a mouldy whopper with your name on it, Mark!
It saddens me – the whole industry decline driven by ostrich-like intransigent adherence to an increasingly irrelevant business model. I’ve worked for JWT, McCann, FCB, Havas and Publicis over the last 40 years. Every one had a story I could use to tell clients and prospects a ‘better way’ with the intent of getting strong and effective creative in front of 24 year old brand managers. As Ritson says, the genius of David Ogilvy, the foresight of Stephen King, Harry McCann’s Truth Well Told … they all helped fine tune how we spoke to clients and their customers.
Now, after the 30 minutes it takes to pronounce all those meaningless syllables, it’s no wonder clients glaze over and opportunities for great work dissolve.
Having been in service roles in WPP for over ten years, it’s a reflection of the fact that the group as a whole has been in decline and ceding more and more decision making to CFOs
So what, exactly, is your solution? By the sounds of it, you would keep things exactly as they were. You’re failing to see the very obvious bigger picture here: WPP Media, WPP Production, WPP Creative. It’s a systematic rationalisation of the offer. That’s certainly better than a mishmash of brands sitting under the equally ugly umbrella of WPP.
Times are changing. Business is changing. Your romaticisation of the big names represents exactly the kind of nostalgic intransigence that is taking the industry under.