Thursday, June 21, 2007

Tell me why

Few months ago, Digitas was acquired from Publicis Group for some as 1.6 bn dollars. Not bad.
A bold move to reinforce the Publicis position in the digital world.
Then, David Armano left the agency to join Critical Mass.
And three days ago, Greg Verdino left Digitas to join Crayon.
And probably some other moves took place in the meantime.

Now, why buy a company, pay a huge amount of money and then lose talents?
This is not a new story about this form of acquisition from the communication groups.
They are late in detecting new trends, then buy companies and try to turn them to their corporate approach and, most of the time, they kill them.


5 comments:

Anonymous said...

Gianandrea,

I won't speak for David, but I don't think the acquisition was the primary reason he left. I really believe a better opportunity that suits him came along and he grabbed it.

gianandrea said...

lewis, thanks for your note. my point is that networks are not able to retain talents. when they invest money in these agencies, i suppose that they consider the talents inside and the management, too. these are the guys that supposedly built the agency reputation: to lose them should be consider a damage.

Anonymous said...

Gianandrea - Lewis is right to point out that the acquisition isn't the *primary* reason I left (I shouldn't really speak on David's behalf but I can certainly speak on my own) but your point is definitely valid -- agencies are 90% talent and I'd say that they do in fact need to do a much better job of retaining key employees. If the big agencies can't find ways to keep employees happy, motivated and growing, you can bet more good people will look for opportunities that better suit their needs. G

gianandrea said...

greg, thanks for your comment. lewis and you got my point: agencies are based on human capital and this is where they must invest. if they pay a huge amount of money and then are not able to retain talents, they bought an empty box.

Anonymous said...

I think Crayon brings all the big agency BS to a small shop. Egos, politics and press puffery. I hope Greg is getting paid a lot!