WPP Shuts Down Red Cell

WPP Group is unraveling Red Cell, the multifarious assortment of agencies it tried to knit together in 2001 into a worldwide network in hopes of duplicating the global coverage of the likes of Ogilvy & Mather, JWT and Young & Rubicam, reports the New York Post (via MarketingVox), making some interesting observations about the inability of agencies to deliver the synergies they’re supposed to in large holding companies. The move follows Coca-Cola shifting creative duties on its North American ad account for its namesake brand to independent Wieden + Kennedy from WPP’s Berlin Cameron/Red Cell without a review.

Red Cell did not live up to expectations, writes the Post, becoming instead WPP’s repository for some 65 agencies that didn’t fit elsewhere - or with each other, having no culture or vision in common. Moreover, more clients are nowadays apparently looking for a big idea rather than a big network.

In the past year, WPP has closed down or consolidated 15 of the agencies, and singled out another nine to form an ostensibly more agile group - the Voluntarily United Group of Creative Agencies (United) - including shops such as Berlin Cameron (once the nucleus of Red Cell). It is headed by Andy Berlin, who became the head of Red Cell after WPP acquired Berlin Cameron in 2001.

United is patterned after micro-networks such as Wieden & Kennedy and Bartle Bogle Hegarty, which are small but capable of handling global clients.