WPP Is Talking Heresy, Snags Dell
December 3, 2007
Whoa. Dell has selected WPP Group for its global marketing services chores. WPP beat out Interpublic Group to snag the $4.5B account. Hit pause folks. A friend of ours just pointed out that their ad budget is bigger than the than Grenada, The Gambia, St. Kitts Nevis, St. Vincent and the Grenadines, Samoa, Comoros, Vanuatu, East Timor, The Solomon Islands, Guinea-Bissau, Dominica, Micronesia, Tonga, Palau, The Marshall Islands, São Tomé, Principe AND Kiribati COMBINED. Martin Sorrell must be peeing in his pants.
WPP is going to create a new global integrated marketing and communications agency specifically for Dell, which they’ve been calling ‘Project DaVinci,’ “because we’ve been looking for the combination of artist and scientist—an agency that has both the creative horsepower and ability to measure the business impact of their work,” the company said in a statement.
It’s been rumored that many folks who worked at 24/7 real media are going to be retasked to the new Dell Account. Get more of that story here. So, now Dell has a numerous bodies working specifically on turning their brand back into a something consumers might actually want. HP? Toshiba? Better watch ya’ back.
“Heresy” was said to be the internal working name for WPP’s proposed unit. WPP is shaking things up. Consider their recent purchases of several digital shops, as they attempt to turn their company into “new era” ready. We’re impressed.
December 3, 2007 at 5:32 pm
I guess it’s impressive that Dell was able to get WPP to create an ad agency just for them…but all that means is that they have an ad agency working to sell their products.
Sort of like HP and Toshiba do.
And considering that Dell’s agency team is going to be making introductions while the other agencies are making ads, I don’t think that this is a good move.
http://dailybiz.wordpress.com/2007/12/02/wpp-starts-new-agency-just-for-dell/
December 3, 2007 at 5:38 pm
Ah, but we disagree. Dell needs an entire team to help them with the transition to selling retail, as well as giving them a firm brand identity. Dell has been asleep at the wheel so long, that the only way for them to get it back together is with such a move.
Dell is the number one seller of PCs to college kids, but after that…Introductions is a good place to start (they need them badly), since Dell has little to nothing right now.
Meanwhile, we were saying we were impressed with WPP considering that they are really trying to get themselves positioned for a whole new ad game.
AS
December 4, 2007 at 1:28 am
Our goal is to create one organization with one P&L that can focus 100% of its time on our customers. We hear from 5 million people per day, so we want to be able to listen and deliver on what we are hearing as close to real time as possible. Forming Da Vinci, our working name for this agency, is a great step towards doing more for our customers. At the end of the day, this is all that matters…..
All the best, Bob Pearson, Dell
March 9, 2008 at 3:04 pm
wow. Sounds comically stupid. Competition breeds quality. Totally sounds like the type of thing Dell would do.
And, as far as attracting the “best and brightest”, who’s going to want to go work on Dell 24/7? No thanks.
Maybe, MAYBE it would make sense to go there, double your salary for three years, then wait to get laid off as Dell will invariably go back to using more than one agency in 3 years.