LONDON (Brand Republic) - WPP Group, the world鈥檚 largest communications holding company, has released details of its plans for a fourth global advertising agency network to be called Red Cell.
Red Cell, named after the red blood cells that carry oxygen, combines the strengths of four agencies: Batey Advertising; Cole & Webber; Conquest; and Perspectives. Sir Martin Sorrell, chief executive of WPP, hopes to fill a gap in the market between large advertising agencies and smaller independent shops.
Luca Linda, chief executive at Conquest which had 14 offices across Europe, will be the chief executive of Red Cell. Mike Doherty, managing director of the Seattle office of Cole & Weber, will be president of Cole & Weber/Red Cell.
Batey becomes Red Cell Asia; Cole & Weber becomes Cole & Weber/Red Cell; Conquest becomes Red Cell Europe; and Perspectives becomes Perspectives/Red Cell.
The network will employ 1,000 staff with offices in 20 cities, with billings estimated at $1bn. The combined clients of the new network include drug maker Aventis SA, the Alfa Romeo and Iveco divisions of Fiat, UK Carlsberg subsidiary Carlsberg-Tetley, Nestle and Singapore Airlines.
Red Cell will sit alongside the existing WPP networks of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide, J Walter Thompson and Young & Rubicam. With a fourth arm, WPP now tops rivals such as the Interpublic Group of Companies and the Omnicom Group, each of which have three.
Sorrell said that Red Cell would be working with budgets of between $50m to $100m a year, typically on what Sorrell described as 鈥渃hallenger brands鈥, ie products that were not category captains but were, at most, secondary brands.
He added that a polarisation in the market had led to a mid-market gap where Red Cell will concentrate its efforts on higher-growth sectors such as entertainment and media, telecommunications, financial services, luxury goods and retailing.
Red Cell also plans to work with people outside the traditional agency realm and will establish a unit called the Eclectic Network which it will use to do this. These people include Bob Geldof and Doug Lloyd, chief executive of Lloyd & Company.
There is further speculation that Red Cell will expand through acquisition especially on the east coast of the US.