EURO RSCG Worldwide, New York, in a move similar to WundermanCatoJohnson's announcement earlier this year, unveiled a branded global marketing services network this week in an effort to consolidate and more efficiently apply its subsidiary agencies' direct and interactive capabilities toward client's needs.
The Sales Machine will be headquartered in New York and will total 76 agencies in 40 countries headed by CEO Daniel Morel.
EURO said The Sales Machine exists as an integral part of EURO's global operation and includes direct marketing, sales promotion, event marketing, sales force motivation and database marketing. According to Morel, the company tested the concept in Europe for three years before deciding to roll it out worldwide.
True North Communications, New York, also unveiled a branded global marketing services network last week. The strategy is similar although the company appears more definite in its plans to operate as a single organization with a single profit center and management team as part of True North Diversified Cos.
The network, Marketing Drive Worldwide, will have main offices in Wilton, CT, and London and will employ about 600 on four continents. Wes Bray and Mark Timbrell have been named Co-CEOs.
True North chairman/CEO, David Bell said Marketing Drive Worldwide's structural architecture would address emerging client needs in the fast moving direct marketing sector. “Our promotion services are structured to better serve clients who seek to consolidate their marketing services across related practice areas and ultimately on a multinational scale.”
WundermanCatoJohnson was the first of the bigger shops to integrate its subsidiary marketing divisions across national borders. Its reorganization announced this past March included the implementation of newly formed Internet services, database management, teleservices and consulting groups. WCJ, New York, an agency division of Young and Rubicam Inc., also installed cross-functional teams to better serve clients.
And while True North, EURO and WCJ each differ in the way they've chosen to organize, their motivations are largely the same: bring direct and interactive expertise, functionality and the deployment of services together in a way that serves any client's needs under any circumstance with optimum efficiency and media neutrality.
According to Jim Battin, senior vice-president of interactive and direct marketing at Partners & Shevak Wolf, New York, “There is no question the root premise underlying these agencies' moves is related to the growing importance of integrating their disciplines. And I believe that the branding of the agency's [divisional] compatibility is very important.”
However some smaller direct marketing agency leaders said the integration of subsidiary marketing divisions across national borders has been around a long time. The branding trend among the bigger shops is more about reassuring existing clients, and convincing new ones, that that they have the ability and the resources to deliver it all.
“Clients don't have time to shop around today,” Morel said. “They want one-stop shopping for everything, the branding, the marketing — all of it.”
