“Reverse the paradigm on the history of advertising….”

Interpublic, one of the world's largest advertising and marketing services companies, no less, recently merged two of its companies; Draft and Foote Cone & Belding (FCB).

The company that looks more equal is Draft where they “combine the brand-building principles of general advertising with the results-oriented sensibility of direct, retail and promotions, and interactive marketing with one ultimate aim: to create demand for the brand.” Which all sounds jolly clever.

Foote Cone & Belding, meanwhile, excites its prospects by billing itself as the “world's second oldest advertising agency.” Well, it should win them the Sanatogen and Saga accounts at least.

While neither company’s website makes much play of the merger (and Interpublic’s, incidentally, still lists the companies separately) clearly lots of effort has gone into the new entity’s employee microsite.

Internal communications is a wholly different world to PR, so admittedly us mere PRs cannot understand why having the new CEO (Howard Draft) address employees via a webcam in his bedroom makes sense. Nor can we understand why inadequately protecting the microsite from a YouTube teenage misfit is also sensible.

Anyway, in an act of wanton vandalism, check them out here and here.

Dreadful American corporatese and, is it just us, or does he focus just a little too much on ‘getting past the politics’….