For example, he pointed to both agencies’ commerce capabilities being strong in different areas. VMLY&R brings more creative commerce to the table, while WT’s strength lies in its technology and ability to navigate platforms.
“That is just one part of the agency, but it’s this massive ‘You complete me!’ Jerry Maguire kind of moment for that capability,” Cook said.
The contemporizing of the CMO’s role led Cook to retool the agency. He increasingly saw the demand on CMOs to bring customer experience and commerce closer to brand marketing, and those CMOs needed a new kind of agency to deliver that seamlessly.
Cook also believes the new VML can be more competitive with Accenture and Deloitte, which have encroached on ad agencies’ territory over the past decade by offering similar services, but entering the market through the lens of consulting instead of creativity. “We were trying to build for that nexus of where consultants are heading and where agencies are heading,” Cook said of VML’s attempt to make an offering truly unique to the industry.
While Cook said size wasn’t the top priority of the new VML, it does bring other benefits that clients desire like stability.
NBZ Partner co-founder Simone Oppenheimer Mandel reveals that one marketer told her they picked a holding company agency over an independent agency because the marketer knew her budget could be unpredictable and felt the larger holding company shop was better equipped to absorb the changes in staffing that could be needed this year.
Accelerating growth (and global domination)
Gut co-founder Anselmo Ramos has not been quiet about his desire for “global domination.” He also hasn’t been quiet about his love for being an independent agency. But those pursuits don’t line up very well. After all, it took Wieden+Kennedy decades of growth to be dominant on a global scale, and decades don’t jive with Ramos’ timeline.
Gut could only grow so fast with Ramos and Gaston Bigio as the main backers of the agency. Following the agency’s sale to Globant, Ramos wants to expand from the seven offices it has already opened in the past five years. He’s eyeing locations where Globant already has offices that Gut can build out from.
Self-described “digital transformation service” Globant represents a new facilitator of acceleration in the industry. Ramos had no intention of selling to a holding company, and instead he believes he has found the right partner on his own client roster. “Globant is a tech company. It doesn’t do what we do and vice versa. So it’s a very strategic, complementary partnership.”
