Advertising New World Order Collapses

There’s something perversely pleasant about the idea of every piece of creative work on the planet that is designed to get people to buy something to feel better about themselves being generated by a single, ocean-spanning, monolithic advertising firm with an ominous name, whether it’s selling Coke or Pepsi, Walmart or Target, Budweiser or Coors. It almost happened! But then it didn’t. The proposed merger of Omnicom and Publicis, two of the four ad mega-companies, has collapsed, in large part because powerful rich people couldn’t decide who should have which powers in the new ultra-ad company. But we still might get something like that, if we’re lucky:

Publicis could make a hostile bid for Omnicom or go after another big player like the Interpublic Group. Dentsu, a large Japanese advertising firm, might also seek some kind of deal.

“We’ve essentially tossed the salad up in the air,” Mr. Wieser said.