GROUPM THROWS UP 'GORILLA DUST': #MediaSnack Ep. 52

On this week’s #MediaSnack we report on a little feisty exchange of words between the CEO of GroupM UK, Nick Theakstone and Mark Finney the head of media at ISBA, the UK’s leading marketer trade association. It all stems back to March 2016 when ISBA’s head of consultancy practice Debbie Morrison launched they excellent media agency contract template with some comments to the FT which angered agencies. In her FT interview, Debbie had suggested that media agencies don’t have the best interests of their clients at heart anymore. The fight back from agencies at the time was quite aggressive but months have passed, the media transparency debate has gathered momentum in different areas, not least thanks to the ANA’s Media Transparency initiative and we probably felt it was water under the bridge. Not so. Last week Nick Theakstone thought that the recent success of one of ‘his' agencies MediaCom (the UK’s largest media buyer) at a media awards event entirely defended the agency community from the transparency concerns raised by ISBA. We discuss how this simply doesn’t make sense, the two things are entirely separate - and we doubt whether Nick would have been making the same point the morning after a successful awards sweep by Zenith. Whatever his intentions, Nick has managed to get headlines for himself and the agency for entirely the wrong reasons, of course everyone is talking about the sniping against ISBA rather than appreciating MediaCom's excellent work. Mark Finney, ISBA’s head of media responded in Campaign, reminding everyone that we need to revert to a more constructive dialogue - at the same time calling Nick’s words “baffling and disappointing” - they won't be exchanging Christmas cards this year one supposes. Next up, we share details of the excellent ID Comms CMO panel which we hosted at LinkedIn’s lovely London HQ. The event was an invitation-only networking and panel discussion, attended by 40 marketers from brands including Unilever, Mars, Lego, Universal Pictures, Disney, British Gas and Royal Mail. The panel discussion featured Martin Moll, Head of Marketing at Nissan Europe, Lindsay Pattison, Global CEO of media agency Maxus and Steve Hyde CEO of 360xec. Finally, we report on news that Adobe has acquired TubeMogul for $540m - a strong indication of the much-expected consolidation in the ad tech space is actually happening.