Cooling the Meme Forges

One of my enduring interests is the industry of the idea studios - those organizations that span the world of business and art and create many of the brands, symbols, and supporting media. 

It is a strange world and has surprisingly fewer players at the high-end than one might expect. 

WPP (which stands for "Wire and Plastic Products" of all things), Omnicom, Interpublic, 

Publicis, Denstu, and Havas are the Big Six. They span the world of marketing agency, brand consultants and public relations and between them they generate somewhere close to $50billion in annual revenues and employ over 280,000 people. 

While I've been meaning to write about these companies for a while now, what got my attention today was Dentsu warning on missed profit targets. The knock-on effect of the economic crisis is hitting marketing budgets. I'm sure this is just the first of these that I've seen, but I'm confident we'll see more.