WPP flicks V-sign at BBH

Oh frabjous day, calloo, callay, he chortled in his joy. As well the knight of Farm Street might when he received news that WPP had wrested back Vodafone's strategic creative account, which had embarrassingly eluded his clutches for the past 3 years.

The account is "strategic" in several respects. First, it is worth a great deal of money – £50m a year in the UK alone. It also gives WPP control of the commanding heights of the Vodafone marketing services business: mastery of the Big Idea, from which all else in due course flows. Finally, it provides further eloquent testimony, in the wake of HSBC and Dell, that an integrated agency specifically built around a client's global needs, and known as the WPP Team model, actually works. (No one mention Samsung in this context, by the way.)

Most piquant of all, however, will be the knowledge that Sir Martin has managed to deliver a body blow to the nether regions of rival agency group BBH. BBH comes from a different place on the agency spectrum to conglomerate WPP. It's a creative micro-network, with limited international distribution. The idea being that it can seed a great creative concept capable of playing globally even though others may be left to distribute, and adapt it, to local markets. BBH, long one of the UK's most accomplished creative agencies, has had considerable success with the micro-network mantra. Which helped it, for example, to win British Airways.

Worryingly, it had begun to peck at WPP's entrails by winning the really big accounts from which, in the pre-digital age, it would have been precluded by its smaller scale. The loss of substantial Unilever business was a particular sore point.

And then, of course, there was Vodafone. In 2002 WPP looked as if it had got the Vodafone business all wrapped up when its leading brand agency, JWT, won the international account. Not for long. BBH was appointed to the telecoms giant's roster in 2004 without a pitch and from then on began to prise open JWT's grip on the account. To this day, BBH handles the UK strategic account, while JWT is left with the more boring product stuff.

So the act of seeing off BBH as well as McCann Erickson in a 3-way pitch for the global strategic business will have been balm indeed for WPP's nettled leader. We can only presume that the UK bit of the business retained by BBH will soon be on notice...if Sir Martin has anything to do with it.

Hooper swoops on Intelligent Marketing

How to make money in a recession. Suave, Stowe-educated Matthew Hooper is back in town, after an entrepreneurial odyssey which has seen most of his business interest focused on China these past 5 years. Hooper has just taken a sizeable stake (said to be 20%) in up-and-coming integrated agency Intelligent Marketing and got himself appointed executive chairman at the same time.

At first sight, Hooper looks out of place in the rough-hewn world of mail-shots, on-pack promotions, shelf-wobblers and BOGOFs: he's about as inconspicuous as a choirboy in a boy band. Contrary to appearances, however, he's a seasoned operator with remarkable business acumen. And for many years was also chairman of the sales promotion industry's top trade body, the MCCA.

He first set up diversified marketing services group Interfocus (himself as chairman) in the late 80s, with Omnicom as a financial backer. Then bought out their stake; then sold the business to Interpublic; then bought it back; then sold it again (for the last time) in 2003. Quite the wheeler-dealer, since he made a tidy profit at every turn.

What made him stage a comeback now, in the Nasty Noughties Depression? I can't do better than quote him: "When the economy is distressed, it throws up opportunities, and good agencies come out stronger." Exactly.

Advertisers think Google is evil

The ISBA conference, an annual jamboree for advertisers and media folk, was  – until lunch-time – a more lively affair than you might imagine. Good, visionary speeches from Richard Eyre, chairman of the IAB, and Stephen Carter, communications minister; and some long-overdue clarification on such recondite industry matters as CRR (contract rights renewal) and BT (behavioural targeting) from the regulator, Ofcom ceo Ed Richards. (One will be relaxed, by the way; and the other is OK, so long as it is 'transparent' and in the consumer interest, whatever that may mean.)

But the highlight came just before the luncheon bell, as Google was put in the public stocks and pelted with rotten tomatoes. For that we have puckish Simon Thompson to thank. Thompson, European md of Lastminute.com, was called upon to chair a panel of industry experts which included the hapless Matt Brittin, UK country director of Google. Thompson immediately rounded upon his helpless victim by instigating a spot poll of his audience. 

"Google", he said, "believes it should do no evil. Which of you believe it is now evil?" A majority of hands shot up in the affirmative. He then turned to the panel: "And which of you?" Blank faces from Nick Milligan, md of Sky Media, Adrian Sayliss (or should that be 'say less'?), head of Publicis-owned Vivaki (a key Google ally) and Andrew Walmsley, founder of i-Level, all sitting uncomfortably close to Brittin. Only maverick former lawyer Mike Kassan was prepared to say he agreed with the motion, mainly because he had spent the last half-hour depicting Google as a manipulative, monopolistic monster that needs to be brought to book. The panel's craven majority verdict would seem to prove him right.