Back in late 2008/early 2009, there was a good deal of optimism in America and much of the developed world; surprising really, given that we’d just suffered the worst financial meltdown in more than 80 years. The reason for that optimism was, of course, the election of a new US president. Barack Obama wasn’t just […]
As the month of May draws to an end, one thing leapt out at me as I looked back at some of the deals of the past four weeks or so – and that was that of the dozen or so deals done during the month, hardly any were ‘conventional deals’. When I say ‘conventional’, […]
THE TIMES – Rob Hill was sitting at his desk one Sunday evening wading wearily through emails when he realised that something had to change. He was clocking up between 90 and 100 hours a week trying to develop his fledgeling events business but didn’t feel as though he was making progress. “I remember being […]
In this increasing wired, interconnected world, it’s easy to get hung up on delivery, process and technology, and to miss what really engages people – that indefinable thing that is called, for want of a better word, ‘content’. Content is the stuff that makes up a marketing message, the thing that prompts people to act, […]
Wow – nobody saw that one coming. It’s not every Monday morning one wakes up to discover that one of the biggest deals in the history of advertising has just been agreed, and kept so secret. The first most of us knew about this was a piece on the Wall Street Journal’s site yesterday evening […]
Back in 2001, an economist named Jim O’Neill wrote a paper for Goldman Sachs in which he coined a brand-new acronym – the BRIC economies. Since then, of course, said acronym has come into widespread daily use as a symbol of the apparent shift in global economic power away from the developed G7 economies towards […]
All customers are not created equal and sometimes they can be more trouble than they are worth. Here’s how to deal with the difficult ones: 1. Decide what the problem is. Work out exactly why they are difficult. Is it because they take up so much of your time with endless demands? Is it because […]
After a month’s worth of rumour and speculation, Apple finally confirmed its purchase of the Beats headphone and streaming business (or, to give it its full name, Beats Electronics) this week for a staggering $3bn (about £1.85bn). The deal, which is expected to be completed before the end of the year, is made up of […]
“One of the reasons this is happening,” commentators said last year when news of the Publicis-Omnicom mega-merger first broke, “is because Publicis is strong in digital and Omnicom isn’t”. And they had a point – although it possessed a blue-chip portfolio of “traditional’ agencies, Omnicom lagged behind both Publicis and WPP when it came to […]
Scarcely a fortnight ago the Green Square Deal Monitor was buzzing with news of new acquisitions by Aegis Media. Over the past week it seems to have gone up another gear. As we’ve said before, Aegis has never been short of ambition and energy, but following its just-short-of-$5bn buyout by the Japanese giant Dentsu earlier […]