Aloha from Portland, where it’s 90 degrees today. I know. It’s not supposed to be that hot here in May.
If nothing, the holding company world isn’t short on happenings. This week was no different with the megas getting a dose of good, not so good and everything in between.
It was a game of musical chairs at Ogilvy this week as there was some leadership shuffling. Advertising’s biggest Philadelphia Eagles fan, Lauren Crampsie, was promoted to president of Ogilvy’s recently combined New York and New Jersey (yes, there are agencies in Jersey, lay off!) operations. Meanwhile, Lou Aversano, who was U.S. CEO, is now chief client officer and global CEO John Seifert is taking on Aversano’s role as interim CEO for the region. Got it? Good.
Next, and it’s not great news if we’re being honest, Johnson & Johnson has been cutting its ad spend, and that’s having an effect on both WPP and Omnicom and the dedicated units set up for the brand. There were terms bandied about like “optimize digital ad content” and the like, but it still sucks when the chop hits.
In sunnier news, Omnicom Media Group named Philippa Brown as their first female global CEO, succeeding Mike Cooper as head of PHD Worldwide.
Also, adam&eveDDB (Omnicom) and McCann (IPG .. now I’m just holding company name-dropping) got a nice little tailwind on the awards circuit with a strong showing at the One Show. Droga5, now with Accenture Interactive, but still independent in our hearts, won several gongs (awards term) as well. The rest of the winners will be announced later tonight.
MDC Partners, they of new leadership/ownership themselves, seems to have kept the ship from veering off into brackish waters (I don’t know why I’m making a nautical reference, either) with a decent first-quarter earnings report.
And Dentsu? Erm, let's not call this Woodstock imbroglio the next Fyre Festival just quite yet, but ...
In other news this week …
The Diet Madison Avenue lawsuit takes another twist.
The Quit Tobacco Pledge is nice, but holding companies may complicate things.
Kill the buzzwords, please.
Two examples of when agency side hustles can be used for good. One that calls out rape victim blaming in India and the other an art project documenting the lives of homeless people in New York. Keep doing these, agency folk. They matter.
Oops! We accidentally became an agency specializing in marketing cannabis to women.
Forsman & Bodenfors is doing their part to help drive diversity in production across the industry.
As always, we invite you to visit our sister site, AgencySpy where, today, you can see Gary Veeeeeeeeeeee say goodbye to his CCO, Steve Babcock.
Oh … and I’ll go ahead and get this out of the way: I will be in Cannes. So if you have stuff going around that (party invites are welcome) or anything else, hit me up at doug dot zanger at adweek dot com.
Have the loveliest of weekends and we’ll see you back here next week.
Warm Regards and #FlyEaglesFly,
Doug Zanger
Senior Editor
Creativity + Agencies
