What a weekend of news. An incredible, history making moment when you realise you are part of an incredible piece of business. These two incredible men have done the impossible. They have created the largest Ad group in the world by some way and with no-one finding out! Hands up who wants to work in a stagnant, stale business that does not evolve or change? Not me. That is why I joined VivaKi and it has been a roller coaster ever since. Now this. Publicis Omnicom Group. It was one of those announcements where the descriptor WOW worked.

I think the coverage has been intriguing, some sensible, most negative but to be expected I guess as this merger touches so many, some utterly small minded, ludicrous and opportunistic.  

As regards the coverage the one thing I have seen time and time is the discussion on scale and how many commentators comment ‘ advertisers will not benefit from this increased scale.’ I find this fascinating for a couple of reasons. The first is that advertisers, media auditors, pitch consultants and every agency pitch document starts with how big they are, at least if you are in the top 10. It has always been so and will be for some time but all of a sudden we have everyone saying scale does not matter. I just don’t buy it and most advertisers don’t either. Scale as I have written in a previous post is not just about buying, it is about resource, depth of pockets, it can be many things, but lets stick with media buying, it will count. Anyone saying otherwise has an angle.

Connected to this is the fact I have grown up by an industry telling me about Group M scale. Media owners, my own agencies in other markets, middle men, pitch consultants – ‘Group M scale counts and is a big deal’ year after year this has been the message, so I am intrigued that suddenly I read that this is not the case and there will be little to gain from this merger in that sense. You can’t have it both ways – either it does count or it does not, because that is not the message we have been giving or receiving for the last 20 years.

I am hugely excited about this merger, we are a small part of history and whatever the future holds, I love being in it rather than looking in on it.