Forced togetherness: Merger mania is but a symptom of growth at all costs.

Let them eat cake!

And so Publicis and Omnicom have joined forces, which, I suppose, is a cool way of putting it. But whatever they did they did it and like any marriage it is for better and for worse. Only time will tell.

Time will also bring us more of the same. To wit: For all their current blather about being right sized the other now-conspicuously smaller marketing driven holding companies will undoubtedly conspire, eventually, whether they like it or not. That is the only possible outcome when growth is your mandate. And in the modern, Western way of doing things (especially business), growth is always the mandate.

Precedents are manifest. After all was not Omnicom once a collection of smaller agencies? Likewise Publicis, Havas and Interpublic. Merger upon acquisition upon takeover. Agencies have been gobbling each other up for decades now. And what do we make of Sir Martin’s WPP? Everyone in Adland loves to debunk him but here we are imitating his strategy. Publicis Omnicom Groupe is but a continuation of growth at all costs.

“Join me!”

Despite all the obvious, negative evidence (can you say cancer?) “growth” is considered equal to great. Even being eaten alive is considered a positive event. And not just for the eaters but the consumed bodies as well. Here, in Silicon Valley, the great wish of all start-ups is to be bought. It’s the same with big, old-fashioned businesses. Morgan Stanley and Dean Witter. JP Morgan Chase. Think about Kraft, General Foods, GE, Wrigley. We can name many more. They are all a collection of other companies, some not related at all. Last I checked, Wilson Sporting Goods was owned by Sara Lee. Cheese cake and tennis rackets?

Who cares? It’s growth.

Playing the devil’s advocate I must recognize the beauty of “coming together as one.” Isn’t that the promise of One World? It takes a village, right? Maybe if Israel and the Arab nations came together that age-old war would finally be over. What’s that bumper sticker say: COEXIST. “Can’t we all get along?”

You scoff. Hell, I scoff. I don’t believe in arranged marriages. They might “work” but they don’t hum. Ask FCB and Draft.

Uh-oh!

Forced togetherness doesn’t hum because it denies cultural identity –at the individual level and at the group level. Tribes do not want to be taken over in the name of manifest destiny. The only ones who (sometimes) profit are the tribal chiefs (shareholders), and when they are over and done with all that remains is the result: a big tumorous entity. Perhaps the most telling example of forced togetherness is the European Union. Has that merger worked? Maybe someday. But right now it’s something between “working” and a clusterfuck.

Even if the Rapture occured, it would not have been the end of the world.

“Hmmm, Rapture.”

Do you think the elimination of people constitutes the “end of the world?” I sure as hell don’t. Frankly, I believe the world would be just fine without us, better even, with demonstrable improvement every day we’re gone.

All this ‘end is near’ talk reminds me that doomsayers need to speak for themselves and not for every living creature on the face of the earth. Frankly, we are all culpable. We immediately think the world has no meaning without us in it. This sort of arrogance drives me crazy. So much so, I wrote a novel about it. Entitled The Last Generation, it imagines a world where people can no longer bear children. The book’s tagline: “It’s not the end of the world. It’s just the end of us.”

Years later, Alan Weisman wrote The World Without Us, which explored these ideas even further. It was far more popular than my book and almost as good!

Still, mine is a minority opinion. Most people tend to believe in some form of human manifest destiny. It goes something like this: We possess souls and other creatures don’t, therefore we have dominion over them and everything else under the sun. Non-believers can substitute “intellect” for “souls.” Either way, when it comes to our perceived superiority even normal (and presumably smart) people can be as sanctimonious as Glenn Beck, as unbridled as Donald Trump, and as relentless as any given dictator. We say we deserve ‘our place in the sun’ (at the expense of other lesser organisms) merely because we exist.’ We mistake the “right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” as a license to commit all manner of atrocities, big and small, many without even thinking. The bible tells us we are created in God’s image so naturally we are in charge of everything else.

Like you, I didn’t particularly want to perish on Saturday but I’m calling bullshit on the arrogant position that if the Rapture did occur it would have meant the end of the world. Like hell.