From Ad Age:
Andy Berndt, co-president of Ogilvy & Mather’s New York office, has left his post at the agency to go to Google, where he will helm a new global unit dedicated to collaborating with marketers, agencies and entertainment companies.
….There has been much speculation over the past year whether Google would try to get into the agency business. The new global unit isn’t being called an agency, but any unit offering creative consultation and account services could be considered one. Interestingly, Google had been trying to lure more creative talent to the company over the past year, according to ad industry executives familiar with the search giant.
Microsoft, meanwhile, recently bought its way into the agency business with its $6 billion purchase of aQuantive, parent company to agency Avenue A/Razorfish. When asked whether it would shed the agency after the purchase, Microsoft was adamant that it liked the business.
I’ll have more to say about this shortly…but the trend is clear. Google is setting itself up as a full service advertising company. And that means client services and creative innovation.
Does Exxon build and operate their own oil tankers? It’s profitable, and in the same industry but they don’t try to own the space, it’s not their area of expertise.
Google does search OK and they are the Exxon/Mobile of online advertising, lots of money right there. No sense in over extending.
The GPhone product line will be a stretch as well IMO.
I don’t buy it. Collaborating just means working together. Maybe Google needed to hire agency talent to get their uber geek left brains to somehow corpus callosum to the creative right side. I really don’t think Google is going to start making the ads, as much as they need people whom understand how they are made, and how to plug them – the creative types – into the massive delivery system.
Expected. Hardly a surprise or anything to react to.
This definitely marks a major step by Google in its attempt to discreetly enter the agency business. By hiring Andy Berndt, even though Google claims he will head a new “global unit”, since this unit is planning on working with marketers, agencies, and entertainment companies, I think that this is simply a way for Google to become a bigger player in the ad agency industry. It will be interesting to see what Andy may bring to the company.