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New Delhi: “Somewhere along the line, after I’m finally off the premises, you—or your successors—may want to take my name off the premises, too,” said Leo Burnett in his last speech at 76. Today, his words have come true as the Publicis Groupe on Tuesday decided to merge the two creative networks—Leo Burnett and Publicis Worldwide—to create Leo.
As per Publicis Groupe, Leo is a fusion of the creative DNA of Leo Burnett and the technological prowess of Publicis Worldwide.
Advertising leaders have expressed mixed reactions to Publicis Groupe's merger of Leo Burnett and Publicis Worldwide, with concerns raised about potential job losses, client conflicts, and the loss of Leo Burnett's strong brand identity.
While the merger aims to create a "formidable global creative force" by combining creative and technological strengths, experts warn that such mergers can be "messy affairs" and that "one plus one is not always two."
They highlighted the importance of prioritising client needs, managing competing clients, and navigating cultural differences within the merged entity.
Making sense of the merger?
While the holding group is calling the merger an attempt to drive scaled transformation, Anirban Mozumdar, who worked at Leo Burnett for more than ten years, believes that the advertising business is responding to what it believes is the need of the hour—complementarity of capabilities and the primacy of size and volume.
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“If it has to be, so be it. Artificial intelligence will relieve us more and more of line jobs, so one can only hope Leo is about the primacy of the human mind and creativity rather than automation,” said Mozumdar, sharing his expectations from the merger.
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Advertising veteran Colvyn James Harris highlighted that at a holding company, everyone looks for more scale because with scale come synergies, and you get the benefits of the various capabilities that have been built by other agencies over time.
However, he added, “Of course, the staff is amortised over larger revenues, which brings some benefits. Unfortunately, this often leads to downsizing under the guise of efficiency and rationalisation of staff, causing a few underperformers to vanish. This is what global holding companies do—they are always looking for scale.”
A “messy affair”
Mergers in a client-facing industry may generate synergies, but they can also be a “messy affair.”.
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Justifying the statement, Tarun Rai, who once sat in the JWT office and served as the Executive Director of APAC, warned that sometimes merged agencies become so focused on their own operations that they start to ignore the client's business, as something to safeguard against.
Providing a rationale for his statement, Rai pointed out that when two entities merge, there may now be two people for the same job, leading to questions about job security. This can cause employees to lose focus on their clients’ work, ultimately impacting revenue.
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Bobby Pawar, the advertising veteran and a former MD and Chief Creative Officer at Publicis Worldwide, said, “The senior leadership at Publicis hopes to achieve growth through this venture trying to combine the technological edge of Publicis with the creativity of Leo Burnett, but sometimes one plus one is not two, and the creation of Wunderman Thompson is testimony to that.”
For the record, the WPP agency Wunderman Thompson, formerly known as JWT, merged with VML Y&R to form VML.
Backing Pawar, Harris also highlighted how two merged entities also bring along a fresh set of challenges on the client side as they may have competing clients from the same sector.
Ideating on how the two businesses could solve some of these challenges, Harris comprehends that the two agencies will create adequate silos so that intellectual property rights can be managed better.
Shedding more light on the subject, Harris said, “Such mergers take a long time, and while there may be some hiccups, clients and agencies both want growth. Sometimes there are conflicts, and sometimes there are watertight agreements that prevent taking on a category if there's a global alignment. In the end, yes, some people may lose their jobs. But in the larger scheme of things, they have a larger company.”
What about the people?
IPs and clients can still be managed, but what about the people?
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“Such big mergers are never good news for thousands of employees,” feels Santosh Padhi, a former Wieden + Kennedy executive and advertising leader.
Strongly opinionated, Padhi hates the fact that a handful of people have the right to decide what’s in the best interest of thousands of people.
Elaborating on his words further, he said, “When such initiatives are taken, it’s the top bosses, who are far away from ground realities, making these drastic and sensitive calls, keeping all emotions aside. Otherwise, we call ourselves a people industry. It’s the passionate people who run and create the agency without looking at their watches or calendars.
It’s because of them that these global bosses have managed the hefty bonuses. When it’s a people business and they are the frontiers of brands, then why do a handful of people who have never visited 80% of the countries and have zero sense about respective countries, cultures, and offices take such a big call?”
Leo has united the firepower of 8,000 creative minds from Leo Burnett and 7,000 from PWW, across 90 countries.
Currently, the creative leadership at Leo includes Rajdeepak Das as Chairman of Leo Burnett South Asia and CCO of Publicis Groupe South Asia, while Amitesh Rao serves as CEO of Leo Burnett South Asia. Paritosh Srivastava is the CEO of Publicis Worldwide India, and Oindrila Roy is the MD at Publicis Worldwide. Vikram Pandey and Sachin Kamble hold the role of CCOs at Leo Burnett South Asia, with Aman Mannan and Shitu Patil serving as NCDs at Publicis India.
What about the cultures of these two organisations?
While agencies have employees from across the world, Publicis draws its cultural inferences from Europe, while Leo Burnett is as American as McDonald’s. So, how will the Titans learn to live and work with each other?
As Rai perceives it, “A merger will face different issues depending on the geographical market. In Europe, the Publicis brand may be stronger, while Leo Burnett may enjoy a favourable presence in North America, and one company may be twice the size of the other in one country, and in another, it may be the opposite. How do you decide the leadership?
For the record, Leo is led by co-presidents Marco Venturelli and Agathe Bousquet, and Chief Strategy Officer Gareth Goodall. Venturelli takes over as Chief Creative Officer
What about the brands?
Leo Burnett gave his whole life to making sure that his agency created good ads, leaving behind a legacy, a strong brand name that upcoming advertisers look up to, and a strong creative force that values new ideas.
When it comes to India, Leo Burnett set foot in the country on July 6, 1992, when Chaitra, an Indie agency, held hands with the global powerhouse to form Chaitra Leo Burnett.
After an eight-year-long stint, the name Chaitra was dropped, and Leo Burnett India came to life. Known for its “humankind approach,” the agency is called "a corporation with a conscience" by many in the industry.
“It's the only agency I know that has a scale for creative measurement,” said Mozumdar. He also added that throughout his experience at Leo Burnett, the agency “never ever” cancelled or postponed the quarterly Global Product Committee (GPC) that looks at the best work across the entire network.
Now, it’s time for Leo Burnett to gain a new identity, as the merger will now lead to the dissolution of the brand name Leo Burnett, a name that touches lives and people across the industry.
“At a time when global brands and challenges require outsized creativity to drive scaled transformation, personalised content, and connected brand experiences, Leo is designed to deliver solutions for the world today by uniting Leo Burnett, the brand of Humankind, and Publicis Worldwide, the network that stands for transformation, leading the change, and the Power of One,” the holding company said in the statement announcing the merger.
So, we asked experts how fair it is to entirely dissolve a brand’s identity, and Rai kept it short and said, “Companies whose only job is to build powerful brands are rather nonchalant about killing off their own brands. It seems to be an industry trend. The irony is not lost on clients.”