Advertising Holding Companies: Viva La Undistinguished Mega Brand!

Chicago recently lost two agency brands—Element 79 was dissolved and its people absorbed by Draft, and Euro was rechristened Havas. This is both good and bad.

What’s good is that divisions that underperform are going away. And agencies are practicing what they preach, applying some brand architecture to their own organizations.

What’s not working is that holding companies are turning into one big brand. From boutiques to some biggies, M&A’s assimilate talent and specialties once they’ve demonstrated their magic. The result is that the key team leaves, the agency loses its relevancy and ultimately turns into the “Denver office that does healthcare and pharma…” or something like that.

In some rare instances, acquired specialty shops, PR firms or media companies may be allowed to retain their independence for the purpose of continuing work on accounts that might represent a conflict with the parent agency.

But are office A and office B that different on a balance sheet? Not really. It’s very reminiscint of national and super-regional banks gobbling up smaller banks. You see it in Chicago, where the Bank of Montreal (BMO) bought hometown favorite Harris Bank.

It stayed Harris for a few years, and it’s now become BMO Harris. The red Harris logo has become blue (because the world needs more blue bank logos) and somewhere, in the not-too-distant future, the Harris name will probably be dropped all together. Then all that will remain are the megas. It’s BMO versus Chase versus Citi versus…

And we’re all clear on how differentiated these big banks are in the marketplace, right?

It’ll eventually be that way with agency holding companies as all the unique brands are absorbed. After all, these are business entities designed to create efficiencies and generate profit for their shareholders.

Viva La Mega Difference.