Hey, that’s no way to say goodbye

It may not have been a shock, but Sir Martin’s speedy and sudden departure from WPP at the weekend was a surprise, says Dominic Mills. Now all eyes are on his legacy, and there are signs one part is already starting to unravel

Well, who saw that coming?

While, as of last Friday, I don’t think anyone expected Sir Martin Sorrell’s tenure at WPP to last much longer, neither did we expect it to end so quickly.

Truth be told, it’s an unbecoming end. It feels like he’s skulked out under cover of darkness – late on a Saturday night is not exactly normal – and in a manner befitting neither his status nor his influence on the industry. Not surprisingly, such initial comment as there was felt more like an obituary.

And whatever you thought of him, it’s hard not to feel sorry. This is not the way it should have ended. Ironically, when it came to succession, he would have been advised to take a leaf out of his arch-enemy Maurice Levy’s departure last June. The old ‘sun king’ stage managed his departure like a theatrical impresario.

So what happens next? First, you can take good odds on some dismemberment of WPP driven by sentiment among institutional investors. But I’d say not too much. The core of WPP and its key agencies – in media, creative and PR – remains formidable. What cleaning up there is, is likely to take place around the fringes (Kantar a possible exception) and the rag-bag of assorted stakes in a long tail of agencies and entities like AppNexus and Vice (why did they buy them? Short answer – because they could).

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Note however, that appointing an outsider as CEO, one unencumbered by legacy thinking, is likely to mean a larger break-up than a smaller one administered by an insider.

Second, what will SMS do? There are hints in both the FT and other media that, without a non-compete clause, SMS will start again and have another go at building a second empire. His sign-off to staff – “Back to the future” – could be construed as a tantalising indicator of his intentions.

Is this likely? On the one hand, this would be a way a) to take revenge and b) to give his legacy – currently tarnished – a final polishing. Theoretically, he could buy any of the bits that WPP disposes of. That would be fun.

On the other, does he really want to take revenge on WPP? After all, in his eyes – and you could argue this was part of the problem – he was WPP and WPP was him, so closely was his identity wrapped up in his creation. As the Leonard Cohen song of the headline said it….

“I’m not looking for another as I wander in my time
Walk me to the corner, our steps will always rhyme”

There’s a certain piquancy in those lyrics.

‘Horizontality’ inverted

One central plank of SMS’s legacy was the idea of ‘horizontality’ – allowing clients to create bespoke agencies by picking and mixing various services from WPP. I always thought this was a bit like saying to a restaurant diner ‘You can have any item on the menu as long as it is cooked in my kitchen’.

But the actions of P&G last week suggest this idea may well have had its time or – indeed – be inverted. It’s a bit like the diner saying ‘You know what, yes I will have any item on the menu but I’ll decide which kitchen it’s cooked in’.

That at least is how I read P&G’s intention to put staff from Grey, Publicis and two Omnicom agencies (Hearts and Science and Marina Maher) into one dedicated unit working on detergents and with offices in New York and Cincinnati.

In a sense it’s a logical conclusion to the idea of horizontality. Once you let clients pick and mix, it’s but a short step for them to say ‘thanks very much, and here’s how we’re going to do it’.

Of course, this won’t work for everyone, but it could attract clients with sufficient scale, clout and experience to manage what could turn out to be a complex beast. And who are these clients? Well, they’re the multinationals the holding companies make most of their money from.

P&G’s move is yet another indication of the way the game is moving on, and is a warning not just to WPP but to all the holding companies that they need to change.

Media consultants: a new player joins the game

I confess I was a little surprised at the news that Nick Manning, eponymous founder of MGOMD and latterly, in his role at Ebiquity, a man focused on uncovering the murky practices of media agencies, was joining MediaLink.

I had him pegged as taking his vast knowledge and experience to a big advertiser in a chief media officer role.

So….MediaLink. Who the hell are they? Pretty much unknown in the UK and Europe, MediaLink is a somewhat unique entity, founded by Michael Kassan, a shadowy yet charismatic mover and shaker on the US media scene, also known as the organiser of the most exclusive, must-attend, adland parties.

Last year, Kassan sold MediaLink to Cannes owner Ascential, presumably an attempt by the latter to lay some different eggs in different baskets. Manning’s job is to give it a UK and European presence.

MediaLink bills itself as sitting at the nexus of Madison Avenue, Wall Street, Silicon Valley and Hollywood – not a concept that currently translates to Europe.

Hence the decision by Manning to start in an area he knows best – pitch and media management services – which should also open the door to other client assignments more in line with the original MediaLink proposition.

There is no doubt this fertile territory for media consultants, fed in no small part by the actions of the holding companies sewing confusion and distrust in their media buying activities.

Take the recent Sky media pitch. I was gobsmacked to see – but perhaps it is naivety on my part – no less than three consultants (Ebiquity, Aperto One and ID Comms) and a specialist law firm (Reed Smith) involved.

You might wonder what the hell do they all do, but there is clearly a ton of work out there.

It would be remiss, by the way, not to acknowledge MediaCom’s achievement in holding on to – and taking more of – the Sky business. Sky is a flagship piece of business, and the pressure on MediaCom – not least because, as a 13-year incumbent it would be on the back foot from the start and against a negative backdrop – would have been immense.