Last week, IPG Mediabrands became the latest holding company group to merge subsidiaries. In a move to reduce redundancies, improve workflows and better support its three media agencies, UM, Initiative and Mediahub, Mediabrands announced the dissolution of the Matterkind and Reprise brands, folding them into Kinesso.
Before now, the Kinesso, Reprise and Matterkind brands each had their own P&L. Reprise focused on search, social and SEO; Matterkind managed programmatic, affiliate and performance-based marketing; Kinesso worked on data and technology initiatives. Each Mediabrands agency could tap any, or all, of the three for help executing on data or technology-heavy work.
Three competing, but similar, business units caused workflow redundancies. Since there wasn’t a single technology solution in place, each media agency’s technology and digital solutions and workflows could vary.
Mediabrands leaders hope creating a centralized technology layer under a single brand name solves those problems. Now, all three media agencies and their clients benefit from Mediabrands’ group-level technology.
“We really want to create a simple structure that is unified against a single way of working at a single P&L. That’s in service of our clients, rather than having multiple competing sets of interests,” Kinesso global CEO Jarrod Martin told Adweek.
Tightening up Mediabrands
It’s been a change-heavy year for Mediabrands, as its leaders began simplifying the group’s structure. Mediahub joined the group in February. Previously, it operated separately from its sister media agencies as part of IPG’s MullenLowe Group. Bringing Mediahub into the Mediabrands structure made the group better resemble other holding companies.
Even after grouping the three media agencies together, there were still three technology-focused business units within Mediabrands.
“No matter how coordinated and connected you are, when you have discrete business units with discrete P&Ls, there is always room for seams [to develop] when it comes to a shared orientation toward the marketplace,” said Eileen Kiernan, global president of IPG Mediabrands.
Leaders decided to streamline the infrastructure. They hope fewer brands will make it easier for marketers to understand Mediabrands’ technology offering, and for agencies to get on the same page about how best to use it.
Packing Mediabrands’ technology and data services inside Kinesso underpins all three media agencies with baseline digital and technological capabilities. This, the leaders believe, will create a more consistent experience for clients. It won’t matter if a client works with UM, Initiative or Mediahub, because now each of those agencies offer the same digital and performance expertise.