Business handshake

Along with the comings and goings of marketing directors, mergers make agencies nervous. A merger, which is usually a takeover in disguise, means consolidation, economies of scale, and value for money - all things PR and advertising agencies hate. So if you’re working on Kraft or Heinz business at the moment, beware! The axe is going to fall.

Fortunately such concerns rarely worry us at P&F because nobody wants to take over any of our clients (or buy their products, come to that). In fact, the last time we had a sniff of a Kraft or Heinz job was apparently when Cadbury decided to stop making Bar Six and wanted an agency to put out an announcement that nobody would notice.

Oddly, Karoline (with a K) doesn’t take this as a sign of unsuitability to work on the business. Instead she maintains that Kranz or Heift “will welcome approaches from challenger agencies, prepared to deliver at a lower level for less money”. They’ll soon have lots of creative and newly merged products to launch, like ketchup flavoured Philly and Lea & Perrins Maxwell House, which will undoubtedly need PR help, but even so, K’s words are unsettling. For someone who once had ambitions to launch British Marmalade Week and describes herself as “the leading PR practitioner of her generation”, she seems to have lost her drive. Maybe industry talk about ‘PR being dead’ has weakened her resolve.

K should be in excellent health, though, because the Indie has reported that short, vigorous exercise helps you live longer. And as this presumably includes standing up suddenly and shouting loudly at staff, she may yet prove to be immortal. Time to look for a new job, I think.