It was nothing short of déjà vu for JWTians when last week WPP decided yet again to integrate two of their agencies globally. In 2018 it appeared that more than a century old agency, JWT, was dealt a bad hand in the merger with the relatively new Wunderman. 2023 proved that years later, the odds were still not in its favour, despite being handed a new deck of cards. The plan was to create a powerful agency brand in Wunderman Thompson, which was to be a sound mix of creativity and technology, and yet the legacy agency’s identity was wiped out in last week’s merger with VMLY&R.
In a sweeping stroke, some of the oldest agency brand names, Wunderman Thompson (JWT) and Y&R were nuked for the creation of VML at a global level. Back in India too, resentment, surprise, disappointment found its way to advertising circles; after all, JWT, previously HTA, has been the alma mater for many advertising greats. Some even say that in the process of writing the next chapter, WPP seems to have tossed out the entire book.
Tarun Rai, who recently retired from the position of Executive Director, APAC, Wunderman Thompson, was with the agency for close to three decades in various roles. Reminiscing about his time at the agency which started operations in India as early as 1929, he says, “From walking into its office in Delhi as a young Account Executive in 1990, to heading it as the CEO in 2015, I have seen many avatars of Thompson. From Hindustan Thompson to J Walter Thompson and then Wunderman Thompson. But always Thompson. So, it’s rather emotional for me to hear that Thompson won’t be around anymore. That it won’t celebrate its century in India. I have such fantastic memories over the years of building some of the most formidable brands, both MNC as well as Indian, of working with some fantastic people - in our company and our clients’. Thompson taught me advertising, it taught me to be a good leader, a passionate professional. But most importantly, it taught me to value and respect our people - our only asset.”
Started in India as J Walter Thompson (JWT), in 1970, it was renamed Hindustan Thompson Associates (HTA) after the agency became fully Indian-owned. As per the law, no fully-owned agency was allowed to handle public sector accounts and almost 22% of HTA’s business came from the public sector. Then again in 2002, it was rebranded as J Walter Thompson, and post that as JWT, in line with the global rebranding, in 2005. Over time the agency has built iconic brands like Hero, Nike, Levis, Airtel, Citibank, Pepsi, Kurkure, Rin, Boost, Goodnight, Lux, Debeers and many more in India.
The legacy agency
Calling JWT and HTA before that India’s finest ‘brand’, Colvyn Harris who helmed the agency for over a decade till he stepped down in 2015 says, “JWT India was known as the non-aligned agency because we were able to break every global alignment. Brands moved to us regardless of which agency they were in partnership with overseas. The rest of the world was able to see the potential of JWT in India. It became a prized possession in the JWT world and flagship agency of the WPP world during the time of Martin Sorrell.”
The agency was considered as a paradise for strategic planners, even as its creative fortunes have been like a yo-yo, varying in phases. Agnello Dias who was in 2006 popularly referred to as JWT’s star Chief Creative Officer says, “When I moved from Leo Burnett to JWT, I was advised by many not to. It didn’t have a really high creative reputation at that time, and even within the agency it was felt that they were not getting the high-end creative recognition that they deserved. This was at a time when India’s presence at global award shows was largely sketchy, promising at best. Like all large, monolithic set ups, I found two JWTs within JWT and both had their pros and cons. I simply set out to do only what I knew and left the results to fate. As a team, we worked very hard in those years to change the perception of the agency through nothing but performance.”
He adds, “The first Grand Prix for India (TOI’s Lead India campaign in 2008) at Cannes Lions was a powerful tugboat for the company, and by the time I moved on from JWT, I felt the mother ship had turned around with the agency becoming a regular name on popular campaigns and as well as at global award shows. In the later years, I felt at some points that the agency could not make up its mind. Either everyone was chasing creative glory at the cost of everything else or they were all chasing business. It started going through phases, and phases are always bad for an agency.”
The decline of a giant
While it has forever enjoyed the status of being one of India’s oldest agencies, admen say 80s, 90s and early 2000s were considered as JWT’s heydays. A senior industry professional who was in a top role at the agency says, “Even in the early 2010s, the agency had managed to conjure up a decent 37% profit with a growth rate that surpassed 20%. Only Ogilvy had done better than us in that year. However, towards the mid-2010s the agency had begun to lose its mojo.” While Ogilvy continues to dominate till date, JWT had started losing its grip as the largest agency in India.
Chiming in, Colvyn Harris says, “If you look back, times were changing and sure there was a Digital world upon us, but nothing would have prevented JWT from continuing to be at the forefront of advertising, marketing, and branding. Somewhere in the last few years, we seem to have lost our way in India and then globally. Our leadership is responsible for the decisions they took as to where the company should have headed. When you hire the best and brightest of talent, especially global leadership or leadership in a specific market, you expect that leadership to steer this iconic agency in the right direction. During my time, we were the hot favourites in the WPP and JWT ecosystem globally, because we delivered on brands, businesses, awards, creativity and revenue. It finally boils down to money. We had a great line-up of brands which are all gone now. This led to a small agency like Wunderman, which wasn’t even a dot in India, engulfing a giant.”
“This is like a bizarre version of a 007 film. There’s James Bond. There’s M. There’s Q. And somehow, Miss Moneypenny ends up whacking all of them. You can decide who is who.”
Bobby Pawar
Senior advertising professional and ex-CCO, JWT India
“I feel merging companies to create scale or to solve declining revenues is a lazy solution. Problems don’t get fixed this way; they increase manifold.”
Rohit Ohri
Global Partner, FCB
JWT has lost a spate of big clients. Last year after the global realignment, it lost the coveted Pepsi account. Other big names that moved away in the past few years were Airtel, Nike, Kellogg’s, and Horlicks. In 2014, JWT’s ‘Nike- Make Every Yard Count’ bagged 8 Cannes Lions, but post that the agency was not able to recreate the magic even on the creative awards front. The first big blow to the JWT brand name came around 2018 when WPP merged it with Wunderman, and called it Wunderman Thompson. By putting Wunderman before Thompson, the global decision makers had sent a strong message signalling the need for Digital preparedness within a legacy agency. Interestingly in India, Wunderman hardly even had any presence. Industry leaders ask, “If the first merger didn’t work out so favourably for the agency Group, what’s the guarantee that the second merger would?”
A senior industry leader from Wunderman Thompson that IMPACT spoke to said, “The kind of work we are doing post the first merger with Wunderman is definitely more well-rounded. People started presenting far more interesting ideas with the use of technology and a Digital-first approach. Shamsuddin Jasani was brought in to turn things around Digitally. The agency was surely going through a transformation, but such transformation doesn’t take place overnight. You can’t change the mindset of the people in the agency, nor can you bring in a new set of professionals in a short period of time. It does take time, and it was hardly simple because there were multiple stakeholders involved, like Mirum and Contract.”
Another senior industry leader who was once associated with JWT says, “You can’t change an agency by bringing in one person; he could barely fire anyone for years or change mindsets of the old timers. By that time the whole Wunderman Thompson ship had sailed. And look what is going to happen now, they are saying globally VML will be a 30,000 strong agency – but it is only a matter of time before a significant number of them will be shown the door. Layoffs are bound to happen.”
And yet one can argue that agency business is hardly like creating products, where one can work around with an innovation and it might sell because of its sheer novelty factor. In the services industry it’s harder, especially for legacy brands and legacy people who need to disrupt themselves while protecting what they have, even as they prepare for the future. After all, it goes against the premise of disruption, which is all about destroying the present to create a different kind of future.
A brand new agency- VML
The next step for those within the agency is to adopt a new name - VML, even as it doesn’t hold any traces of their former identity, be it Wunderman or J Walter Thompson. While VML is a huge agency brand globally, it is just five to six years old in India, and is slowly finding its footing in the country. VML in its new form will be the world’s largest creative company, combining brand experience, customer experience and commerce, and will be launched on January 1, 2024. The combined company will have more than 30,000 people in 64 markets as mentioned in the press release. Jon Cook will take on the mantle of VML Global CEO, and Mel Edwards, who was the CEO of Wunderman Thompson, will become VML Global President, with the management team bringing together strong leaders from across both companies.
Back in India, Saurabh Saksena is currently leading the older entity VMLY&R with Mukund Olety who is the CCO. The agency shot to limelight after winning its first ever Cannes Lions in 2022, which was a straight Grand Prix. So far there have been no announcements on who will be leading the new agency VML here in India.
Bobby Pawar, senior advertising professional and ex JWT CCO says, “This is like a bizarre version of a 007 film. There’s James Bond. There’s M. There’s Q. And somehow Miss Moneypenny ends up whacking all of them. You can decide who is who. But jokes aside, while this move to do a merger may strike some as stupid, the more stupid thing to do is judge it before we see what all it entails. This could very well be genius. My conjecture is that it could be. That is, if they don’t try to write a new chapter in the story of the two merged companies, but a whole new book. Otherwise, this could be a case of a whole being smaller than the sum of its parts.”
Some industry experts say that WPP should have given it a fresh name and not chosen one of the four agencies considering it has a whole new purpose, and will get a completely different kind of structure. Earlier post two individual mergers, the agencies carried the baggage of VML, Y&R, Wunderman and J Walter Thompson, and now it will come with the baggage of VML. Others say it was blasphemy to obliterate the legacy of an agency like JWT.
Ashish Khazanchi, Founder, Enormous says, “It’s a b2b brand. I don’t think they’re going to be impacted in the short run. Not something I would do, but I think it’s possible for them to build it from here. If they have a clear vision of who they want to be as a new entity and what difference they want to bring to the industry, they could start a fresh new journey. They’re certainly going to miss the stature that the older brand enjoyed with legacy clients and with the government. Nothing that good work and PR can’t fix.”
Struggling for relevance
Advertising holding companies have definitely seen better days, with Meta and Google encroaching into their territory now, emergence of AI which is threatening creative jobs at the lower levels and profitably suffering overall. Many of these networks are trying to consolidate the agencies in their system like Dentsu or Omnicom, which recently launched Omnicom Advertising Services by centralising the leadership for its creative agencies, or even WPP for that matter, which has been at the forefront of mergers even in the past. 20 years ago, creative agencies used to lead and the media agencies followed. Now it is the other way around. Especially after the onslaught of Digital, the media side of the business has assumed a much bigger role, and brings to the table a larger share of the profits. Creative agencies on the other hand are struggling for relevance even as margin pressures loom large.
Sharing his point of view, Rohit Ohri, Global Partner, FCB who has had more than a two-decade long association with JWT says, “I feel merging companies to create scale or to solve for declining revenues is a lazy solution. Problems don’t get fixed this way. They increase manifold. Individual creative agency brands have a culture and a belief system. Unless the entities being merged have strong synergies and complementary capabilities, mergers always spell disaster.”
“If they have a clear vision of who they want to be as a new entity and what difference they want to bring to the industry, they could start a fresh new journey. They’re certainly going to miss the stature the older brand naturally enjoyed with legacy clients and with the government. Nothing that good work and PR can’t fix.”
Ashish Khazanchi
Founder, Enormous
“From walking into its office in Delhi as a young Account Executive in 1990 to heading it as its CEO in 2015, I have seen many avatars of Thompson. From Hindustan Thompson to J Walter Thompson and then Wunderman Thompson. But always Thompson. So, it’s rather emotional for me to hear that Thompson won’t be around anymore.”
Tarun Rai
ex-Executive Director, APAC, Wunderman Thompson
“In other markets, VML may have a different kind of equity and may not be unknown. So, in the larger global scheme of things, India may just be collateral damage.”
Agnello Dias
ex-Chief Creative Officer, JWT India
“I bet it was the karma of the unceremonious burial of J Walter Thompson that happened across offices and staying with one name that became a curse. VML? No, it doesn’t sound anything like my alma mater HTA/ JWT.”
Suman Varma
ex-JWT Leader
“During my time, we were the hot favourites in the WPP and JWT ecosystem globally, because we delivered on brands, businesses, awards, creativity, and revenue. It finally boils down to money. We had a great lineup of brands, which are all gone now. This led to a small agency like Wunderman, which wasn’t even a dot in India, engulfing a giant.”
Colvyn Harris
ex-CEO, JWT India
What’s in a name
As far as WPP’s global decision to make VML prevail over JWT, Y&R and Wunderman is concerned, it was probably taken, keeping in mind its biggest markets of Europe and USA. However, extinguishing a legacy brand like JWT in India and allowing a new agency like VML to overshadow it here has hurt sentiments.
Agnello Dias explains, “What we’re talking about is an India-specific problem. It may not be the case in other markets where VML may have a different kind of equity and may not be unknown. So, in the larger global scheme of things, India may just be collateral damage. And that is a bullet that the decision makers have decided to bite. As far as India is concerned, it’s as good as starting a new agency from scratch. It is a price that the powers that be have decided to pay in a larger global context.”
An alternate view comes from another industry professional who didn’t want to be named, “What matters to the client is what you bring to the table in terms of e-commerce capabilities, strength in terms of data access, kickass ideas, etc. They won’t refuse to do business with VML just because it hasn’t got a JWT in its name, even if it is more familiar.”
Giving a counter view on what legacy means to clients today, Ohri says, “FCB is India is living proof that legacy matters to clients. Legacy - not measured as length of time but as consistency of culture. Our creative culture has been built and nurtured over 150 years. In India 7 of our top 10 clients have worked with us for over three decades. When organisational cultures align, we see these long-term win-win partnerships.”
With Wunderman Thompson being laid to rest, it is the end of the road for one of India’s oldest agency brand names, which stands sacrificed on the altar of scale. The fate of the agencies under the Wunderman Thompson umbrella – namely Contract Advertising, Mirum is little known at this point. Even as the legacy agency brand makes way for the largest creative company in the world-- VML, for the many JWTians who spent decades building the agency, winning businesses and putting it on the global map, this is not the choicest move. As explained by Suman Varma, an industry professional who spent 23 years with J Walter Thompson, “I witnessed the three name changes that this Goliath has gone through-- HTA, to J Walter Thompson to JWT and quite recently, Wunderman Thompson. I bet it was the karma of the unceremonious burial of J Walter Thompson that happened across offices and staying with one name that became a curse. VML? No, it doesn’t sound anything like my alma mater HTA/ JWT.”
