Small Fry Feed Off Merger of Big Fish; Is big actually better or is small beautiful? Small is at least funnier, in the hands of rivals of the soon-to-merge Omnicom and Publicis

September 22, 2013

Small Fry Feed Off Merger of Big Fish

By STUART ELLIOTT

SOME people love collecting sayings that seemingly contradict each other, like “Many hands make light work” versus “Too many cooks spoil the broth.” In the advertising business, those who believe that “Bigger is better” find themselves at odds with those who believe that “Small is beautiful.” The debate has been intensifying as the bigger on Madison Avenue get bigger — most notably the planned merger, announced in July, of the Omnicom Group and the Publicis Groupe to form what would be the world’s largest agency holding group.There is sure to be considerable discussion of the merger this week, during the Advertising Week 2013 conference in New York.

In the vein of another saying, “When life gives you lemons, make lemonade,” smaller, independent agencies are using the formation of what is to be known as the Publicis Omnicom Group as a catalyst for initiatives to promote themselves to potential clients and would-be employees.

The smaller fry are extolling what they consider to be the benefits of being small, like nimbleness, and the drawbacks of being big, like high overhead.

Or as Tim Brokaw, who with his brother, Gregg, owns Brokaw, an agency in Cleveland with 54 employees, put it, “Small is the new big.”

Brokaw was completing work on a humorous employee recruitment campaign when “news came through of the merger,” Mr. Brokaw said, and it has served as additional grist for the campaign’s mill.

“We heard from some refugees” of agencies owned by Omnicom and Publicis, he added, among the more than 200 résumés his company has received since the campaign began.

Employing the theme “It’s time to take your talents to Cleveland,” the campaign includes online ads geographically targeted to marketing professionals in the Chicago and New York areas on Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and the AgencySpy blog.

The ads offer prospective employees tongue-in-cheek contrasts between working in bigger and smaller markets. One ad depicts a mansion, declaring, “What you can afford on a media coordinator salary.” Another ad suggests how comfortable it could be to work in Cleveland, if not sartorially correct: “Trade in those skinny jeans for some jorts.”

Although the self-deprecating humor of the campaign may appeal to those outside Cleveland, some eyebrows are rising in the home market.

“They’re about to set our building on fire,” Mr. Brokaw joked about the reaction of critics who are, he said, “not the target audience; it was never meant to be a tourism campaign.”

An initiative from Copacino & Fujikado, an independent agency in Seattle with 35 employees, took a similarly cheeky tack. A billboard that the agency had erected near the Space Needle offered “Congrats to Publicis and Omnicom” and portrayed them as gigantic creatures resembling Godzilla and King Kong, shaking hands (or paws).

“It started with us winning the small agency of the year award for the Northwest region from Advertising Age,” said Mike Hayward, creative director at Copacino & Fujikado, adding: “Do you do a news release and put it on your Web site? That’s the standard way to do it.”

Rather, the agency decided “to show people who we are by showing them who we aren’t,” Mr. Hayward said. “Juxtaposing us against the two giants shows how we think and what we do.”

That was underlined by the fact it took only “three or four days from the time we came up with the idea to the time the billboard went up,” he added, as well as the small price tag, about $2,900.

The response has exceeded what executives at Copacino & Fujikado expected. “We had a company from Beijing contact us to work with them,” said Brandy O’Briant, managing director, and potential employees have been reaching out.

Ames Scullin O’Haire, a small, independent agency in Atlanta, is producing a three-part Web series, through its ASO Digital Films division, that mocks the Omnicom-Publicis merger. In the initial video clip, a smarmy account executive at a newly merged goliath named UniGlobalAdvertCom briefs a client on benefits that include an office in Antarctica.

The dubious client keeps asking, to no satisfaction, “What does that mean for me?” The clip ends with the words “Bigger isn’t always better” on screen.

“With Publicis and Omnicom coming together, independent agencies like ourselves are going to be the Davids going up against these Goliaths,” said Patrick Scullin, executive creative director at Ames Scullin O’Haire, which has 55 employees. “I’ve yet to see a ‘process’ result in a better idea.”

The first part of the online series has generated “a big increase in traffic to our Web site,” he added; Part 2 is to be released on Tuesday and Part 3 in two or three weeks.

Although “we’ve heard a lot of buzz in the agency community” about the video clip, Mr. Scullin said, “we haven’t heard anything from Maurice Lévy or John Wren.” Mr. Lévy is the chief executive of Publicis and Mr. Wren is his counterpart at Omnicom.

What do those chiefs think about the pokes from the smaller agencies? A spokeswoman at Omnicom in New York declined to comment; a spokeswoman at Publicis in Paris did not respond to an e-mail.

Martin Sorrell, chief executive of what is now the world’s largest agency holding group, WPP in London, which will remain No. 1 until the deal is completed, offered a reaction.

“Humor is one way of expressing” opinions about the merger, Mr. Sorrell said. “We’ll see how it goes.”