The questions Accenture’s raid on Initiative’s leadership raises for agencies and marketers
TrinityP3’s Stephen Wright looks at what the questions Accenture’s recent raid on Initiative’s leadership team – Melissa Fein, Sam Geer and Chris Colter – raises for the market.
Every few years it seems an event happens in the Australian media agencyland which is seismic and which realigns the landscape for all players.
Last Friday feels like one of those. In 2013, it was the Ikon leadership departures. In 2015, it was the Mediacom troubles. And in 2021, it was Aimee Buchanan’s defection from Omnicom to GroupM.
Each of these shifted some of the power dynamics in the vital multi-billion dollar focal point of the marketing ecosystem held by the six holding groups and their respective media agencies.
It has been more than five years since Accenture acquired The Monkeys, and for much of that time both Mark Green and the wider Accenture Song group has been clear to the market that ‘media isn’t for us’.
Wristy, with all due respect the only genuine seismic shift in media was when Toyota’s Bob Miller took on the cartel of then media accreditation authority under the trade practices act, on restraint of trade, brought in by Whitlam and Lionel Murphy after then ‘It’s Time’ election. Miller won & that opened the doors for Dennis Merchant (Vale), Mitchell, Total media et al to open the market up. Then the holding companies started up their own media brands. The rest, as they say, is history.
As exciting as it is for Accenture, Mel etc, time as always will tell however, & I wish them every success. However as the editor of La Figaro wrote just after the French revolution, now that was seismic….’The more things change… the more they stay the same…’
Richard Goodrich.
Stephen, if you think the Accenture MMM model is advanced, you have no idea what you’re looking at. The only advanced thing is the Price tag.!!!
Good piece Steve.