Enfatico Folds Into Y&R

WPP

Employees are rightly raging angry judging the comments on the news about WPP decision to fold Enfatico into Y&R.

Warren Buffett always cites durable competitive advantage as a moat surrounding your business, in this instance the castle just collapsed around them. Did the basket of companies acquired to build up Enfatico’s capabilities prepare for a sharp exit strategy? Friends and colleagues are amongst this news.

“Torrence lied. Wasn’t their a video of him going on and on, on how Enfatico is doing well and projects were planned, and stuff was all good. BU$#hit. Advertising is based on lying. Staff lie, HR lie a lot to candidates. PR lie. CEOs lie and make fake statements. This isn’t a creative industry anymore. Its about lying and presenting a false front to sell products or anything and by any means necessary.”

Several blog comments from the days news had a similar dishearten view of it all:

“I would start with “don’t call yourself the agency of the future until you have the slightest idea of what to do with the present.”

2 Replies to “Enfatico Folds Into Y&R”

  1. “The move is a retreat from one of the most ambitious projects on Madison Avenue – an effort to eliminate turf wars by housing many different marketing disciplines within a single firm. The structure was one of WPP’s key selling points when it landed Dell’s advertising and marketing business in December 2007.”

    A statement from the agency read that this was “a strategic decision” and that “Enfatico remains a standalone brand alongside Y&R’s other companies including Y&R Advertising, Wunderman, Burson-Marsteller, Landor and others.”

  2. AGENCY spy said of it:

    “You knew this was coming. From the beginning, Enfatico was the subject of the ad industry’s jeers. One client. Too many bodies. A huge lease on a downtown building. Mediocre creative, high level staff changes on the client side and everyone has heard the rumors that Dell is shopping around. A bold idea has gone bad. CEO Sir Martin Sorrell was going to have to do something with the increasingly heavy weight of Enfatico. WPP isn’t healthy enough (and really who is?) to redistribute the shop’s employees, which number around 800 people worldwide. Where are they going to go? As Sorrell recently wrote in The Financial Times: “Some have said that, intellectually, recessions are exciting or fun. That is callous nonsense. Telling someone who has lost their job or business that their troubles are merely part of a cycle will provide little comfort.” Oh how true. Maybe Marty-Mar should write everyone at Enfatico a little note, hmmm?”

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