I'd presented my paper to the 4th German Media Day in Munich a week ago - "Trends in Worldwide Communications planning" (that's a subject for another place). So with the help of the most excellent translator Michael, I sat back to enjoy the rest of the session. I stumbled into the most awesome item of Media Madness, recounted by the frustrated Chairman of Grey Germany - Frank Dopheide

Grey can't get their media agency to be creative about new media opportunities, even though it's a sister WPP company. He described the media agency as stuck in a time warp - "10% here and 20% there as before and we have a 5-year deal we can't break"

So Grey flaunted convention and set up their own in house digital media agency. Except that didn't work too well because on the small customer base they couldn't understand all possible technologies and couldn't match the stand alone digital agencies.

So in despair Grey have brokered a deal with Microsoft who are now operating as the Grey Germany digital agency

Makes you wonder why bother with a media agency especially when the guts of the client revenue has to be passed on to an outside party. Integrated seamless client service is a pipe dream, and its not just in Germany. It's happening everywhere.

If WPP are worried about downturns in revenue it might be best to stop this madness and ensure their existing cost base delivers better services