THE END of THE Dogfight

Frustrated at having his growth restricted by the industry norm that an advertising agency couldn’t service competing clients, McCann-Erickson chief executive Marion Harper created a loophole by acquiring the Marshalk Company advertising firm in New York. Rather than meld the organisations together, he maintained them as separate competing businesses, feeding into an overarching company called Interpublic Group. Thus, the first holding company was formed in 1956.

Harper’s objective was to emulate the model of General Motors, which consisted of autonomous competing divisions serving the overarching parent company. While at first criticised by the marcomms industry, the Interpublic Group model served as the template upon which WPP, Omnicom and Publicis were built. Over the decades that followed, the holding companies snapped up the biggest names in advertising and pitted them against each other. WPP chief executive Martin Sorrell has been quoted saying that advertising is a dogfight and he only hopes that one of his dogs is last one standing at the end.

This is, of course, a fabricated form of competition, an illusion which both advertisers and clients have bought into to give them peace of mind. Every so often we’re reminded of the existence of this illusion, as was the case last year when Countdown’s creative business moved from Ogilvy & Mather to Y&R, both WPP-owned companies. It was simply