Lowe, here in New York, has just lost the Saab account. Earlier this year they lost the GMC account. As Gertrude Stein might have said, as of this moment "there's not a lot of there there."
A reminder, Lowe has been an IPG catch-basin for a lot of agencies. I joined Lowe when it was called Marschalk. They then merged with Scali. Then they merged with Ammirati, which had previously merged with SSCB, which had previously merged with Bozell, which had previously merged with Kenyon & Eckhardt. In other words, what had once been probably close to $1.5 billion in billings is now virtually no more.
I used to kiss off the demise of agencies as part of the push for global efficiency. Because starting 20 years ago, it was the mid-sized shops that closed.
But now, it's clear as the ice in a dry martini, that the old order is crumbling. And the ash and residue ain't pretty.
a new generation of people on the client side have no particular relations to the old guard of agencies.
ReplyDeleteTheir world is a new order indeed, with new players to work with.
Add to that all the press about the demise of the traditional agencies, and what comes to mind when mentioning an old agency brand is, yes, old.