Talk:Proposed merger of Publicis and Omnicom

Concerns

One party (me) wants to keep the concerns, as I feel that it benefits the article, as there are already lots of worries about how this, the biggest advertising company by billions, will affect the advertising market in general. I say leave it there for now, as it has good sources, and addresses some concerns. However, another user has removed the concerns section twice, so I have initiated this conversation to here his opinion. Matty.007 15:48, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

• Sure these are concerns, but I'm not convinced these, as stated in the article, are all that major that requires a separate section. There is always fallout from an advertising conglomerate merger, and the bigger ones the riskier they are. The first step is regulatory approval. If all goes plain sailing, that still doesn't mean there won't be client defections. Levy and wren have been in the business long enough to know it's likely that Coke will either dump the new agency group and leave for Ogilvy, or will force pepsi into the arms of Ogilvy. But we'll see that when we see that. -- Ohc ^¡digame!_{¿que pasa?} 15:56, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

How about we leave it there for few days, and see how it goes down. If that's all there is, we get rid of it, but if more turns up, we review whether it is necessary? Does that sound OK? Matty.007 15:58, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

I nominated it for DYK, if you're interested. Matty.007 15:59, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Let's see whether that, or this gets to the MP first! -- Ohc ^¡digame!_{¿que pasa?} 16:31, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Actually, I'm not sure the DYK hooks is all that satisfactory, because 2 and 2 don't always make five in such matters, so making it an unwise "prediction". We'd be safer saying that two of the top three ad groups merge, meaning the big two will be ahead of the rest by far. -- Ohc ^¡digame!_{¿que pasa?} 16:39, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

I changed it to 'is expected to have'. Mentioning large sums of money may get more hits though. Matty.007 16:50, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Yep, as we're talking astronomy...

On a few of those points in the article, I'm pretty sure tax residence is up there as a reason for choosing Netherlands, and it's probably more than helpful it's "neutral". As to the $500M in "synergies" in this free-spending industry, the driver is undoubtedly media buying, but I've yet to find a source that says so. Although I'm sure that will come. -- Ohc ^¡digame!_{¿que pasa?} 16:55, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Are you OK with the DYK hook now? Thanks for the structuring work on the article. How do you decide to call your sources what you do? I find it a little confusing, to say the least... Thanks, Matty.007 17:13, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

I still have reservations about the hook, but I will sleep on it. The refs are named with the date and source (and if necessary author) in yyyymmddSourcename[Authormname]. It might not make sense when the only publication date is 20130727, but it will help when there are other stories and other sources to cite. -- Ohc ^¡digame!_{¿que pasa?} 17:29, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

OK, is that standard? I haven't been doing it, so will need to adapt if it is. Thanks for your help, though. Matty.007 17:33, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

No it isn't standard, but you're welcome to adopt it. It's just a notation I find useful when reffing up whole articles and avoiding naming conflicts among citations. -- Ohc ^¡digame!_{¿que pasa?} 17:52, 28 July 2013 (UTC)

Déformation professionnelle

Having the phrases like "brainchild" or "mega-merger", the article looks as if it's been written by an advertising professional. I guess it's not appropriate language. I don't know if it's mainpage-worthy or not, either. --176.43.88.31 (talk) 05:12, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

Feel free to change it, remember: be bold. Matty.007 12:59, 1 August 2013 (UTC)

• Yes, I wrote those words as alternatives, to give the text some variety. And they may come across as a bit tabloid. Welcom to suggestions for alternative wording, but there's no escaping that this is a humongous merger and will have gigantic repercussions throughout not just the advertising sector, but all of FMCG too. -- Ohc ^¡digame!_{¿que pasa?} 02:23, 2 August 2013 (UTC)

Proposed merge and deletion

Before initiating a more formal action, I thought I'd test the water after tagging this for notability. I added info about this failed merger to the history sections of the Publicis and Omnicom articles, but question whether the merger itself, since it never came to fruition, is worthy of more than a line or two - and certainly not an entire article. The majority of the article is hypothetical scenarios that never came to be. A redirect doesn't make sense since there's no way to pick which article to send readers to. On a humorous related note, there was this little follow up afterwards [[1]], but again - nothing to suggest this should warrant an article. Thoughts? TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 21:35, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

This certainly has the sources to justify a stand-alone article, and I think any time two of the top three players in any global industry announce a tie up, we can write an encyclopedic article on it. This article could certainly be improved, but I would be against any deletion proposal. UnitedStatesian (talk) 21:46, 8 January 2019 (UTC)

The question isn't so much the notability of the failed deal (no question) but whether this warrants a content fork, versus regular coverage in the individual articles. I know about WP:OTHERSTUFF, but I can only find one other article about a failed merger or acquisition, and that one Attempted purchase of T-Mobile USA by AT&T, is much more extensive, with news of related lawsuits and hearings. That one wouldn't fit nicely in either company article. I contrast that with the relatively subdued judicial activity and media coverage of the proposed Publicis Omnicom. Are there any other articles about failed mergers or acquisitions? Not a merger or acquisition that happened and was then undone like AOL Time Warner or Quaker Snapple (neither of which have forks anyway) but like Broadcom Qualcomm (called off - no fork), Pfizer Allergan (called off - no fork), Staples Office Depot (called off - no fork) or Halliburton Baker Hughes (called off - no fork)? Even the on again off again T-Mobile and Sprint mergers are devoid of a content fork. TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 00:15, 9 January 2019 (UTC)

Recognizing the same WP:OTHERSTUFF caveat you mention, there are three other articles in Category:Attempted mergers and acquisitions, and I think we don't need lawsuits to get a stand-alone article on a merger of this magnitude (involving two of the top three players, plus cross border) up to WP:GA status. There were, as I recall, industry and customer reactions, government involvement (France in this case), "pundits" weighing in (I found this 3 Key Takeaways from the Cancelled Publicis-Omnicom Merger), plus the general corporate drama. UnitedStatesian (talk)

Good job finding that category - I didn't even think to look below. This particular article though, in comparison to the others in the category, doesn't seem to warrant an article; the material it contains is limited enough to easily put in each of the two company articles. If it was beefed up to the point of being unwieldy to merge, perhaps I might change my mind. Another thing to consider - if you take away the Omnicom Group template, which is where I saw this article, it is an orphan. So that puts its utility into question. At the risk of me garnering WP:IDONTLIKEIT charges, let's agree to disagree and see if anyone else is interested in chiming in. Thanks for the discussion. TimTempleton ^{(talk) (cont)} 02:03, 9 January 2019 (UTC)