PwC Gives Ad Agencies a Much-Needed Kick in the A$$

Hey everybody, great article in the Wall Street Journal about PwC's acquisition of an agency, a creative agency called Pond, P-O-N-D. It's interesting for a couple reasons. First of all, the continued sort of disruption of the ad agency business, which in my view has left itself vulnerable to such disruption, the reality is that their interests have become so out of line with their clients' interests, whether it's spending on fraudulent clicks for a campaign or not knowing where ads are running, etc. Agencies are struggling. And so here comes PwC and Accenture with their big digital services divisions that are attacking more sort of digital transformation I have to tell you that the best quote came from the head of PwC's digital division. So first there was a quote from an agency head saying, "In our pitches, we're not seeing any consulting firms like PwC." And the guy from PwC responds by saying, "Yeah, they're not in the right pitches. Of course they're not seeing us. We're doing sort of bigger, more important stuff." He said, "In fact, the CEOs we meet with want to reduce their marketing spend." They're not looking to spend more. I'm hoping that PwC and Accenture and others can bring a little more of an analytical approach as opposed to the decades and decades of ad agencies who, you know, used to make money the more you spend on media, the bigger commission they get. So where's, where's the alignment of incentives? It's not in the right place. Anyway, check out the PwC article, their acquisition of Pond. That's all for now. I'll keep you posted.