The not-so-odd couple: nu-skool iProspect, old-skool John Brown

John Brown Media: a traditional content agency preparing for the future.

Dominic Mills argues that Dentsu Aegis’s acquisition of John Brown Media – undoubtedly driven by iProspect – will force more than a few agencies to think: where-the-bloody-hell does this leave us?

The standard justification for a merger or acquisition, such as the one announced last week between iProspect and John Brown Media, is 2+2 = 5.

As far as deals of this type go, I start from a more sceptical position.

It is best illustrated by this supposed conversation between the great philosopher Bertrand Russell and his lover, society beauty (and possibly the inspiration for Lady Chatterley), Ottoline Morrell.

Ottoline: “Bertrand, we should have children. With my looks, and your brains, they will go far.”

Russell: “What if they had my looks and your brains?”

I am sure Mr Combative, aka the pugnacious Andrew Hirsch, CEO of John Brown, will take issue with my description of John Brown as old-skool. I use the term though, not to denigrate John Brown, which has an illustrious heritage and has been ploughing the content furrow since 1987, but to underline the gap between it and iProspect.

Dentsu Aegis’s iProspect is a construct of the digital age, a tech-centric ‘performance’ agency specialising in search, PPC and digital display and which is, if not Google’s largest single agency global customer, one of the top three.

Old world, and new world.

So what is the logic of the deal? Yes, it is being played as a Dentsu Aegis purchase, but iProspect is the real driver here, and its global president, Ben Wood, is the man who identified and wooed John Brown.

At first sight, an arrangement that unites a search agency with one best known for Waitrose Food Illustrated and the John Lewis magazines looks odd.

But to see it that way is to misunderstand the way the lines between agency disciplines have become almost completely blurred, and how in many cases this has been driven by the explosion of content marketing.

Changes to the search eco-system (i.e. Google’s algorithms) have been constructed in such a way as to reward quality content. If the efforts of search agencies are not underpinned by good content (as opposed to, for example, industrialised, indiscriminate use of key words by monkeys with typewriters), then their business model is threatened.

iProspect, whose global clients include the likes of Adidas, Burberry, Hilton and British Gas, needs good content, and lots of it.

But of course content is not in the DNA of agencies like iProspect, which tend to be dominated by techies, negotiation-driven buyers and data scientists. It could have gone out and built its own team of content creators – journalists, planners and art directors – but the cultural fit would have been, well, tricky. It would also have taken time, and lacked credibility.

Indeed, it was this gap in its armoury that motivated Wood to sign iProspect last year up as a member of the Content Marketing Association, thus providing him with a forum in which he could mix with content agencies, understand them better and, possibly, meet one he could try out on the dance floor – and woo if he liked them.

Wise move. As it turns out, the two have been dancing together for some six months, not only in the UK, but also South Africa and most recently North America, where iProspect helped John Brown in a successful pitch.

With a stroke and few million quid, therefore, Wood has acquired that content credibility he needs, plus an international capability that could be turned global. “We’ve got to be seen to be serious,” he says. “Playing around at the fringes won’t do it for us, and our clients.”

As Wood sees it, it’s an opportunity to reinvent iProspect, broaden its offering and add an extra competitive edge.

But it also works for John Brown. As Hirsch acknowledges, traditional content agencies lack the data and analytics skills that are increasingly demanded. “It’s become a more obvious weakness on our part,” he says, “but it’s where iProspect is very strong.” And John Brown gets a platform off which it can expand globally.

None of this is to say, however, that there isn’t a role for John Brown within the wider Dentsu Aegis/Carat/Vizeum empire, where its agencies also need access to quality content.

As I understand it, Carat was caught on the hop last year when British Gas suddenly decided to call a content pitch, and had to scramble around for a white-label partner – although not John Brown, which pitched separately. As it turned out, the exercise came to nothing when British Gas aborted the pitch, but it nevertheless underlined the need to Carat for a resource of this kind.

This may explain that, rather than being subsumed into iProspect, John Brown will keep its identity and physical separation when it moves into its new offices in Old Street in October.

I imagine, as they woke up the news of the deal last week, there will be more than a few agencies thinking ‘bloody hell, where does this leave us?’.

They will be both the traditional content agencies, who will think John Brown now has a big competitive edge, and the media agencies that have moved aggressively into the content space but lack credibility when it comes to actually producing the stuff. They will feel that Dentsu Aegis has stolen a march on them.

The chances are then that there will be a splurge of M&A activity in this area. It will be fascinating to watch.

And I’m sure the children of Ben Wood and Andrew Hirsch will possess both brains and beauty. The others will be hoping they can do the same.

Image credit – screen grab from www.johnbrownmedia.com