Emphatically not into Enfatico ad

You pretty much never see an agency buy an online display ad to promote itself, and that's not a good thing. In fact, the first time I've ever seen this done came today, from Enfatico, the new all-Dell agency created by WPP, and to me it seems crazily off strategy. (I found it on the Adweek home page.) The ad, at left, would seem to exist to attract clients, and yet, the agency's first, and probably only, priority in the near-term is to concentrate on Dell. Maybe the ad was meant to recruit talent, but all it does is link to the Enfatico home page. Why does this exist? Branding? Why do you need to brand when you're Dell's house agency?

Did 'Ad Age' kill the name "Synarchy"?

You may have seen yesterday that the new name for WPP Group's Dell-dedicated agency is Enfatico, instead of Synarchy. Now the question is, "Did the name change because of what happened after the name was leaked, or was it never all that definite anyway?" Fortunately for Ad Age, its initial story did leave an out, stating, "WPP could change direction if the name doesn't pass legal muster or translate well into the various international locales in which it operates." What it didn't say, of course, was that the company might also steer clear of the name if it was linked to something, like, say, Nazis, a connection that I believe was first made by the writers of that story, who pointed out that the term synarchy's Wikipedia entry, " ... quotes from a book on Vichy France that had an account of French industrialists who saw Nazi Germany as alternative to Communism." The blogosphere noticed, and now, the unit has a new name, Enfatico.

It's not anarchy, it's Synarchy

I kind of knew that George Parker would have a much better take on the name of the new WPP Group Dell agency than I would. It's called Synarchy. Go read George's post; don't waste your time here.

Welcome to the new, silo-free Mindshare!

The big ad news this morning seems to be Mindshare's decision to get rid of the silos Interaction, in favor of being completely media-neutral. The shop will now be split into four disciplines: client leadership, business planning, invention and "the exchange" roughly translating to account management, media planning, creative and digital, and media buying. (Yeah, I know that's just the kind of knee-jerk interpretation that , including disassembling its digital unit, MindshareWPPMindShare is trying to avoid, but here at Adverganza, we like to dumb things down). The story in Mediapost deals with the thorny issue of what creative agencies do when media agencies also do a form of creative. "We think the ad agency has even a stronger role in the new process," Mindshare CEO Scott Neslund told the publication. Of course, Neslund isn't the first to share this sentiment, but what's interesting is that as power in the business has shifted, you never hear the head of a creative agency talking about how a media agency fits into its world—only the other way around.

Forrester's weird interactive marketing agencies report

A tipster has slipped me a PDF of Forrester's annual report about interactive marketing agencies, which picks OgilvyInteractive as best among the best and brightest. There's a full accounting of the agencies they rated here. This report, which has been known to make interactive shops shake in their Doc Martens, is both the most and least comprehensive of the, um, genre, if that makes any sense. It rates agencies on a voluminous 52 criteria ranging from campaign integration to financial resources to account management, using Advertising Age's Top 50 Interactive Agencies list as a starting point. But then it gets really, well, uncomprehensive. The study only examines seven agencies closely, and it's a peculiar bunch of cats and dogs—in addition to Ogilvy, Forrester looked at Avenue A/Razorfish, Critical Mass, Digitas, imc (squared), Sapient and VML. VML? A fiarly minor WPP shop? Forrester's rational is that it wanted to look at both independent and holding company-owned shops, that the shops had to have crossed a number of thresholds in terms of revenue, revenue growth, client growth, employees and ability in social media. (The report also points out that it does a separate review of Web design shops, where no doubt some of the missing are located there.) But still, one of the problems here, I think, is looking at only one source. Virtually everyone who tries to compile a comprehensive list of interactive agencies, defines the segment differently. As some of you know, I worked on Adweek's Top 50 interactive agencies list for some time, and although we all became frustrated at the increasing difficulty of getting accurate information, at least, back when we were doing it, it offered an alternative viewpoint. The Ad Age list, for instance, doesn't include McCann WorldGroup's MRM Worldwide, and, indeed, MRM was not evaluated. It's also strange that RGA didn't make the grade, but if that's because Forrester considers it a Web design shop, that seems misplaced given how the shop has expanded into other areas over the last few years. As for Sapient, the company has only recently started building creative into its tool set ... and without creative, it's hard to see how a company could be a superlative interactive marketing agency. Just ask Avenue A, which had to go out and buy a few shops a few years back to become full service. Well congrats anyway Ogilvy.

Only a Microsoft could afford aQuantive

As I was saying yesterday, we should still expect the most valuable ad technology companies to land with the the major online media properties. In case you haven't heard yet, Microsoft announced early this morning that it is buying aQuantive for $6 billion, paying an 85 percent premium for the privilege, and paying twice as much for the company as Google paid for DoubleClick. Though I'm not sure I ever saw it printed, rumors have been circulating for about a month that Microsoft would buy aQuantive, the best way, other than whining about the Google/DoubleClick deal, for Microsoft to fight back against its archrival. It probably also got the better company. What has always been impressive about aQuantive is how it managed its way deftly through the dot-com bust, always steadfastly believing that in the end, strong analytics capabilities and a focus on ROI would win over clients. As for the price, $6 billion is a lot of money, but Microsoft can afford it, especially when one considers what is at stake: Microsoft has had its problems in competing against Google and Yahoo in online advertising, and there just aren't many ad technology companies still on the market that can hold up to aQuantive. It was time for Microsoft to do something dramatic. But let's take a look back at WPP's agreement yesterday to buy 24/7 Real Media for a paltry $649 million—WPP's valuation is just under $19 billion; Microsoft's is almost $300 billion. So, though I'm sure that WPP, and its rivals, may have been eyeing aQuantive (which also, of course, owns the digital agency Avenue A/Razorfish), the value of the company's ad technology simply put it out of their league. One last thought: isn't it somehow a sign of the times, that this flurry of ad technology acquisitions occurred during the same week that the TV networks held their upfront presentations?

WPP gets its ad technology company

In some ways, it’s hardly surprising that WPP Group has succeeded in buying 24/7 Real Media. Talks between the two companies had been rumored for weeks. On the other hand, it still seems a bit odd. Though old business models are being done away with all over the place, the acquisition marks the first time that one of the big ad holding companies has gotten into the business of selling ads—24/7 handles inventory for a number of sites. And while WPP said when it announced the deal this morning that it was buying the company for the technology, it’s worth asking whether WPP was also buying what it could. Consider that 24/7 competitor DoubleClick was bought by Google for $3.1 billion, and the decidedly second-tier, 24/7 is being bought by WPP for about $650 million. Microsoft also allegedly kicked 24/7’s tires, with at least one report putting the amount Microsoft was willing to offer at $1 billion. If this had come to a serious bidding war between any agency holding company and Microsoft, the holding companies surely would have lost., despite what Motley Fool says. As the consolidation of ad technology companies continues, we should still expect the most valuable to land with the the major online media properties, not with WPP and its competitors.