A Sympathy Card for Some Friends in Digital Media
I’m several years out from OgilvyOne so while my information may not be current, my perspective as a former agency leader is still relevant. The news of Neo@Ogilvy being folded into WPP’s Mindshare, explained in the name of simplicity, was disappointing on several levels:
- Creative and media should be friends. As chief creative officer of OgilvyOne New York, I loved working with Neo@Ogilvy, which was integrated unit within us. There was the performance marketing aspects of being better direct marketers using direct channels, and there was the crazier creative opportunities you could propose only with a media partner at your side in a meeting room. One of my favorite innovative digital media stories was from Neo. For the Paris Hotel in Las Vegas, the search marketing strategist realized from user reviews that the cheaper Paris hotel was a great view of the fancier daily Bellagio hotel fountain show. As a test, they changed the search copy to great views of fountain show and room rentals went through the roof for several weeks. It was this kinds of hands-on, people-driven analysis that made me a believer of insight-driven media creativity.
- Simplicity is for the lazy: I’ve never liked simplicity. I get that it’s good for customers and consumers but the real world is complicated and if I’ve learned anything helping organizations tackle digital transformation is that the interesting requires a village, and demands complicated. We have to be good at this. We can’t give up. So a headline to “simplify” prompts questions about the real motives.
- Media will self-implode: Entrepreneurial media, even at the size of Neo@Ogilvy, was great to watch. Sure, they had buying power and expertise but they also worked fast and smart. These media empires are good at scaled buys and probably have pockets of creativity but in a world of media shifting to programmatic and away from paid display, I don’t get the career track for people in it. Will you become CMO, or are you really not about marketing and sales, but about analytics and headed somewhere else, very distant from what the objective is today.
Would love to hear positive reasons for this move beyond "scale" and gobblygook.
What scares me about this re-bundling of media is that creative’s best friend has gone off to summer camp, and it’s certainly not music camp.
Tireless Ruthlessly Competent Insurance Defense Counsel
7yMany organizations use these moves to mask an underlying problem or challenge. I have no knowledge of the specifics here, but agencies are under pressure to improve the bottom line and removing an entity's independence may result in cost reductions. Good luck to the team as they seek to deliver great results for clients.
Mat, it's a bad headline. The first paragraph states that Neo will continue on as its own entity within a new "Mindshare Performance Group." Nothing has become simple in marketing and that smart/fast culture is what's valued and is needed to help deliver truly cross discipline connected agency teams. It's a new chapter not a postscript. A lot of brilliant work ahead and business results to deliver for brands @ogilvy and @mindshare.