Advertising Age published a follow-up about the WPP mega-merger that blended VMLY&R and Wunderman Thompson to create VML. Don’t have the time or interest to read the report—which apparently collected industry executives’ and experts’ opinions on the corporate collision—but the opening paragraph offered enough to generate color commentary:
WPP made big news yesterday when it announced the merger of two of its largest creative networks, VMLY&R and Wunderman Thompson. The new entity, to be called VML, will begin operating in January of next year and will have 30,000 employees, making it what the holding company is calling the largest global creative agency.
Advertising icon Jay Chiat famously wondered, “How big can we get before we get bad?” Well, WPP already answered that question for holding companies decades ago—and now the conglomerate has put an exclamation point on the query for White advertising agencies.
What’s most outrageous is the hype declaring “the merger of its two largest creative networks” to erect “the largest global creative agency.” Okay, but consider how the entity adopted the name of its least creative unit—VML—and is technically comprised of dying creative shops that hooked up with data-driven dumpsters.
This is not as if Wieden + Kennedy teamed with Chiat\Day in their respective heydays. It’s more like a shotgun wedding between Zimmerman Advertising and Fathom Communications.
How big can we get before we get bad? Hey, these outhouses were bad long before they got big.
The Ad Age piece depicts the image above stating: VML EST. 2023. A truer announcement would’ve trumpeted, “VML—Excreted 2023.”
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