Is Omnicom's Strategy Solid?
When looking over the last 3-5 years in M&A activity among the Big Four advertising holding companies, one thing is quite apparent; Omnicom has been extremely quiet in comparison to it's competitors WPP, Publicis, and Interpublic. The question is, why?
French Publicis has swallowed monstrous digital shops Razorfish, Rosetta, and Digitas. WPP has been building Possible Worlwide, it's first digital-only shop and Interpublic has been pushing R/GA and Huge around the world. But Omnicom, number 2? Basically nothing.
Insight can be derived from John Wren, Omnicom CEO, in his second-quarter-earnings call where he responds to an analyst pressing him about his competitors' acquisitions: "Our belief is that all of our services are digital and will become digital ... and it's my personal belief, two years from now you won't even use that word to make a distinction."
Basically, Omnicom is attempting to bake digital into it's core business model, throughout it's legacy brands, DDB, BBDO, and TBWA. They believe that instead of buying digital shops and placing them in silos, it's more wise to overhaul the whole company from the inside out.
This begs the question, are they doing the right thing? Are they building the advertising agency of the future? Or is digital something that should stay in it's own silo? Time will tell.
Just recently the Dallas-based Richards Group swallowed up it's digital arm, Click Here, in what seems to be a similar line of thought to Omnicom. Maybe there is something to be said about this strategy...
What are you thoughts? We would LOVE to hear from you!!
