By Prabhakar Mundkur
Is this the final death of advertising as we know it? The last nail on the coffin? Or is it that the communications conglomerate that started it all has forgotten what is branding in their quest for “interconnectivity of brand experience, commerce and customer experiences” words that Jon Cook, Global CEO of VML used to the announce the death of Thomspon, previously J Walter Thompson and Y & R, previously Young & Rubicam.
Not to speak of Wunderman.
Although I don’t think Wunderman was nearly as great a brand as either J Walter Thompson or Y & R, it had certainly gained a reputation starting from its origins as a direct marketing agency. Somehow I am unable to shed tears for Wunderman but to think that both J Walter Thompson and Y & R do not exist even as the initials depresses me. To me, it is the death of creativity and strategy more than the death of advertising. The fact that they had been reduced to initials itself was depressing but I had just begun to accept it.
Strangely, the erstwhile JWT which was named after its founder J Walter Thompson had sold the business at the turn of the early twentieth century because he thought that advertising had no future. While it did well in the intervening 100 years or so it is strange that his spooky prediction about the future of JWT should finally turn out to be true.
So what is VML?
Do those 3 letters conjure up any images in my mind? I am afraid not. Who do those initials belong to and what do they mean to the rest of us? To me, I am sorry to say, it sounds like a company producing scooters at best. Maybe that classifies me as an advertising dinosaur. But even dinosaurs must have their say on history.
John Valentine, Scott McCormick and Craig Legible started VML in 1992 in Kansas City. I never thought that a great communications company would emerge out of Kansas City. Kansas city is known only for BBQ and a mighty good time!
The Challenge for WPP
The question really is how WPP is going to transfer the legacy of JWT and Y & R into a Johnny-come-lately company such as VML. What happens to 100 years of thinking about advertising and branding that made JWT famous? Thanks to stalwarts like Stephen King, Jeremy Bullmore and many others. People who laid down the foundation of the advertising business and built interesting theories about how communication worked. Or the creativity of Y & R who is known to have produced the first colour television commercial in advertising history? Or the theory of Archetypes and how that could be brought to hear on advertising which first emerged from writers that worked at Y & R?
What happens to the legacy of proprietary knowledge, analytical rigour and creative solutions these two great advertising agencies brought to bear on the rest of the communications industry?
Or are 100 years of history and knowledge going to dissolve in the vacuous nothingness of AI, technology, customer experience and commerce? That is a lot of words that somehow don’t convey much to me but are found in the press releases of the new age communications companies.
In retrospect, Wunderman-Thompson was a good example of bad branding from the world’s largest communications conglomerate. Why would they have delegated Thompson to second place in the first instance? More people surely knew Thompson rather than Wunderman. And in process kill an over 130 year old brand with much higher equity.
Wunderman was a small entity. Thompson was a big entity. Wunderman-Thompson was a non-entity. So I am not even sure I should be shedding any tears now that both of them are dead.
I am sure “Commodore” J Walter Thompson as he was lovingly called must have flipped a few times sadly in his grave last evening when he saw the VML press release.
Goodbye, J Walter Thompson, Young & Rubicam and Wunderman.
Hello, VML, whoever you are!
And Sir Martin what do you think of what your successor is doing?
PS: Meanwhile, Sir Martin’s successor has just got himself another five-year contract from the Board. Share price is trending at a third of its 2015 peak and lagging behind Publicis and Omnicom to No 3.
