WPP's Boots coup doesn't bode well for media's future.(Brief Article)

"What the bloody hell does a bloke who buys paperclips know about media," one of the agencies that lost out to BMP (now OMD) in the 1993 Boots media centralisation moaned.

The whole pitch had been run by the Boots procurement department and Claim Beale price, not quality, was the prime motivator, the unlucky contenders grumbled. Sod creative thinking. Sod strategic vision. "How much?" was key. Not that creative thinking or strategic vision were really options back then. In fact, in those blissfully simple days before the word strategic was invented, buying muscle and commission levels were what most agencies sold themselves on anyway.

Despite the fact that the media world has moved on to a more sophisticated plane since then, last week it seemed as though the procurement department had struck again. Boots unceremoniously yanked its media account from OMD's breast and thrust it without warning into MindShare.

This was not a case, though, of OMD versus MindShare. Indeed, there is no suggestion that OMD has done anything other than a very fine job for Boots. This was clearly a WPP appointment, embracing MindShare but also pooling all creative into J. Walter Thompson and handing PR, market research and brand consultancy into the WPP family.

Clearly, for all the talk about media taking control of the client's communications process, nothing is more powerful to a beleaguered client than a global ...