Raj Kamble, Founder and CCO of Famous Innovations: Are mergers the death of creativity?
In light of the upcoming Omnicom-IPG mergers, Raj Kamble, Founder and CCO of Famous Innovations, reflects on his history of 15 years with Lowe and IPG.
I started my career with Enterprise under Mohammed Khan, which was Lowe’s India partner. It was the biggest honour of my life when I received my offer letter from Lowe Howard Spink, London in 1999. Lowe Howard Spink was the crown jewel of the British ad agencies in those years, boasting of the likes of ‘Dirt is Good’ (which was translated in India to ‘Daag Acche Hain’) and ‘Every Little Help’ for Tesco, ‘Axe Effect’ for Axe Deodorant, ‘World’s Local Bank’ for HSBC and many more like this. Everyone I worked with was a genius, from Charles Ing, Tom Nortman, Paul Wineberger, Alex Taylor, Adam Kane, Andy Amadev, Adrian Holmes, Vince Squib, Late Paul Silburn to Sir Frank Lowe himself. Cannes Lions had only one Grand Prix in the entire show in those days, and it found its way to our office years in a row. Business School graduates were copywriters and copywriters were no less than businessmen.
I then worked with Lowe for 15 years – across London, Mumbai and New York. IPG group has therefore been my home longer than any home I’ve lived in and much longer than even my own agency. When I was really bored and planning to leave, Matthew Bull gave me a really interesting opportunity to lead a special unit called The Flying Squad under IPG, through which I toured their agencies worldwide including Madrid, Stockholm, Milan, Mexico, etc. But, sadly, in those 15 years I saw Lowe become a relic of its former self. And while there can be no one cause for a change like that, if there was one I had to choose, it would be the big M word that has taken the industry by storm lately – mergers.
In the 15 years with Lowe, I saw Lowe change many forms:
Lowe Howard Spink Lowe & Partners Lowe & Partner SMS Lowe Bozell
Lowe Deutsche
Lowe Lintas
Lowe Worldwide
MullenLowe
And hundreds of other local mergers
And there was only one thing common to all of them, they made things worse 😉 When I joined Lowe New York it was a 1000 people company. When I left it was 100 people. Today hundreds of Lowe offices all over the world have already shut down.
It’s a recurring cycle: in the early days, agencies like Chaitra, Ulka, and Trikaya thrived until they were absorbed by larger network agencies. Now, the cycle is repeating, with big tech companies stepping in to swallow those same network agencies. As history shows, this will pave the way for small, innovative creative agencies to rise and flourish once again.
Now, with the impending merger of Omnicom and IPG, everyone’s discussing how this will be a mega consolidation of media and tech capabilities, how it will give them massive negotiation power and create a giant ad network. Omnicom’s share price fell after the announcement while IPG’s went up. But what about the creative agencies? Lowe, McCann, FCB, BBDO (where I have also worked), TBWA and DDB are all icons in their own right. They’ve built brands that we live and breathe, but today it seems like creativity is just the icing on the monstrous cake that is media and technology. We’ve already seen legendary brands like JWT and Y&R vanish last year. Look at the shambles that Dentsu is in after those bullish acquisitions. Are Lowe, FCB and others to follow suit? Mergers may save these networks millions of dollars in backend costs, but they sure are the death of creativity. And I feel bad for my home because it taught me and thousands of others everything about this industry.