Editco.net

All £250m of it, to a new Group M subsidiary designed to bring together the best of WPP's media talents.

The trouble is, these deals tend not to work. At WPP Sir Martin Sorrell's big idea, apart from moving further into digital, has been to cherry pick the best talent from his numerous creative and media agencies to make a compelling case to really big advertisers.

This has only really worked with HSBC and most of that, I suspect, is to do with Peter Stringham, an ex Y&R hand, being in charge of HSBC's advertising. So he knows the ins and outs of multinational agencies. And Stringham happily employs agencies outside of WPP if that suits his purposes.

WPP landed a similar deal to HSBC with Samsung a short time ago, which unravelled within a year. As did its plan to create a single client agency for Dell.

As for the COI, it surely can't be sensible to give the whole business to one media agency? The only checking measurement you have is the consultants, and they're frankly not capable of measuring the efficiency of a £250m media account.

If this deal lasts for a year I'll be surprised.