The agency folded into Y&R last week almost as sensationally as it launched. It’s a massive embarrassment for the holding company, which launched it as Project Da Vinci under the direction of Casey Jones, the former vice-president of global marketing at Dell.
So, where did Enfatico go wrong? More pertinently, was it really doomed to fail from the start as many are suggesting?
The industry has been highly critical of the venture since WPP inked the US$4.5 million, three-year deal with the computer maker in December 2007 after a lengthy and complex holding company review.
Trail through the blogs and websites and the project is slammed for everything from its invention and naming process to its creative output (or lack of it). And now the bets are on that Enfatico will cease to exist altogether before the year is over.
To be fair, and for all its criticisms, WPP’s concept did work on paper. Here was a new agency structure in which all the parts (media, creative, digital, account etc) were under a single P&L. Real integration that the industry talks about so much. The idea was to ensure that, unlike in most holding companies, Enfatico would be free of inter-agency squabble and its teams unified towards a common goal.
But since its high-profile, aggressive hiring spree 16 months ago to build a 1,000-person marketing agency, sources suggest that only half that number actually made it on the pay role and creative executions (outside of the Indian campaign) have been few and far between.
Internally, the cracks in the Enfatico structure were apparent early on, and not helped by the departure of its creator Jones, who left his post at Dell just a year after the birth of Enfatico.
While the deal set out to whittle down Dell’s roster of some 800 agencies across the world, it was never exactly a one-stop shop for all of Dell’s marketing needs. The agency always reserved the right to tap internal WPP agency sources (as well as external ones) and did so regularly.
Which wasn’t particularly a problem until Enfatico began competing against its siblings and pitching for non-Dell clients.
One of Enfatico’s biggest issues was always going to be the fact that it was built around a single client. Which by its nature meant that it would have always struggled to be anything but a revolving door, fighting to attract and keep the best talent.
For one, most creatives don’t necessarily aspire to deal with a direct, unsexy piece of business like Dell. Nor do many of the top stars - whether they are creatives or not - want to work on a single client, which offers little to no diversity.
Indeed, a client-specific agency is always going to have great difficulty in selling long-term career growth to top talent.
It’s the same challenge facing many in-house agencies. Creatives and executives who work across categories and brands tend to develop skills both horizontally and vertically.
They tend to solve problems better through their experiences with similar issues in different categories. Ironically, the merger with Y&R comes as Enfatico is tipped to have just secured its first non-Dell client, according to reports in the US.
In hindsight, yes, Enfatico shouldn’t have been standalone from the outset and would have benefited early on from being tied closer to a larger WPP agency.
The question now is how long it can realistically survive.
And amid all this debate, let’s not forget Y&R - somewhat lost in all the headlines. The change at least should present a lucrative opportunity for the agency.
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