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The future of advertising agencies: Omnipotent, or omnishambles?

August 2, 2013 at 4:54 am | News Desk

CROSS-COUNTRY deals in the advertising industry can be painful affairs. Look what happened to Guy MacKendrick, the young executive sent by his London-based agency to oversee its acquisition of a New York rival, in “Mad Men” (yes, it is now compulsory to refer to the hit television series in all articles about the ad business). The staff throw a party to celebrate the takeover, and a drunken secretary drives a lawnmower through the office, shredding Mr MacKendrick’s foot.On July 28th, however, there were no bizarre gardening accidents as executives of two real-life advertising firms toasted their merger with champagne in Paris. Maurice Lévy, the boss of the French Publicis Group, and John Wren, the head of its American competitor Omnicom, toasted the birth of Publicis Omnicom, which will overtake British-based WPP as the world’s largest advertising and marketing agency, with combined 2012 revenues of $23 billion and a market value of $35 billion.To placate French fears of foreign domination of one of the country’s most prominent companies, for the time being the combined firm will keep headquarters in both Paris and New York and be listed on exchanges in both…
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The Economist: Business

News Desk

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