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The legendary ad man and art director George Lois died a few weeks ago. I never met him, but I knew who he was and followed his career since before he took his ad agency public in 1962, making him the first in that industry to go public.
On Aug. 1, 2013 I posted a blog about George Lois and about how ideas are currency. I also sent him a copy of the blog and received a reply, but his response wasn’t about ideas, it was about his opinion of a pending merger between two giant ad agencies. In view of the recent trend toward private equity firms rushing to buy or invest in accounting firms, I think what he wrote provides some interesting insights and I am sharing it here.
Here’s what George Lois wrote:
“Advertising agencies depend on constant creativity
to achieve growth and success.
But be aware that the bigger any enterprise gets,
the more departments, the more marketing research,
the more acquisitions, the more mergers,
the more group grope, the more analysis paralysis —
the worse the product becomes: lost creative control,
lost passion, lost belief that you’re producing
greatness. The merger screams that technology is god,
without a hint of the god-like creative process.
Creativity is dead…Long live Creativity.”
Now substitute the appropriate language for giant size accounting firms for the advertising firms he was referring to.
By the way, the largest ad agency group in the world is Omnicom, with revenues of $14.5 billion, which employs 77,000 people. The fourth largest is Interpublic Group with revenues of $9.0 billion and 54,000 people. The largest accounting firm on the 2022 Accounting Today list published in its March 2022 issue is Deloitte, with revenues of $22.9 billion with 121,000 people and the fourth largest is KPMG with $10.0 billion and 40,000 people. I believe the average person feels advertising is a much larger profession than accounting, but these numbers might indicate they are not too far apart in size.
I started out wanting to write about getting ideas and using your imagination but veered into the business aspects of large firms. Check out my blog last week for some comments about generating ideas.
Do not hesitate to contact me at emendlowitz@withum.com with your practice management questions or about engagements you might not be able to perform.
