It’s never a dull week in global media and the last five days have been no exception with the news being dominated by Elon Musk dropping a cool $44bn to buy Twitter and GroupM taking the decision to merge MediaCom with Essence to form EssenceMediacom.
Looking at the latter, prior to the start of the pandemic, agency networks had been reviewing their models and looking at solutions and initiatives to ensure their expertise and knowledge was aligned with the latest advertising techniques, models and mediums and the ever-evolving needs of global clients.
One of the key issues clients have been talking to us consistently about over the last three or four years has been a yearning to not deal with a multitude of people when it comes to working on the media planning implementation of their campaigns. They were getting frustrated at having to deal with creative in one office and then another for data and another for media buying. It’s why the allure of an independent agency has grown considerably over the last few years, but as one wise consultant once told us the bigger global clients will always want to work with the bigger agencies, but they still needed to change their operating models.
What the pandemic did was accelerate this process and forced networks to be more efficient and get even closer to their clients, which is why this merger is a smart move by GroupM and by the reaction from key clients such as Mars and Google has been welcomed by the industry and makes sense.
Combining the power and expertise of MediaCom with the digital capabilities and experience of Essence will set an interesting precedent for the rest of the networks and it will be interesting to watch this space closely over the next year and to see what other consolidations will take place in the industry.
It’s a positive move we believe will help both the newly formed agency and its clients to continue to produce some fantastic news.
Talking of news Elon Musk’s purchase of Twitter has raised a few questions – good and bad – but keeping things positive it could be an amazing opportunity for Musk to make drastic changes and rules which help stop the level of abuse that is ruining lives and the experience of its other users. He has a chance to make an impact that could help change society and the horrid experiences some users suffer on the platform.
Outside of the keyboard warriors and fake news the platform is a brilliant tool for understanding what is happening around the world and as a result rightly has an allure for advertisers looking to reach certain audiences.
But what if there was a tool to eradicate this? It could well have the same impact Jeff Bezos has had on The Washington Post since he took over…
Equally – and this is based on some of the comments Musk has made since the purchase – it could be for the worse with him using the platform to make or break companies, or to send shares up or down, and allow the like of Donald Trump airtime.
Hopefully it’s the former, but again it will certainly be interesting to see what happens over the coming months. There is certainly never a dull moment in media.