Hasta La Creative!

I’ve always said that mergers and acquisitions only benefit the people who make the merger happen. Everyone else gets screwed.

Adweek this week takes an even closer look at the newest consolidations taking place on Wall Street, which will bite some ad agencies in the butt:

Banking failures and buyouts involving Washington Mutual and Wachovia sparked wildly volatile developments involving five ad agencies and nearly $300 million in combined ad expenditures.

Last Monday, JPMorgan Chase stopped an old-fashioned run on Washington Mutual with a takeover. Almost immediately, the reskinning of the latter’s Web site began (branches are to follow with new signage), signaling the beginning of the end of a WaMu rebranding effort began just months ago by Omnicom Group’s TBWA\Chiat\Day, Playa del Rey, Calif., the bank’s agency of scarcely a year.

TBWA\C\D faces the prospect of losing the entire account practically overnight. The business, worth $135 million, per Nielsen Monitor-Plus, would presumably be picked up by Chase’s lead agency, independent mcgarrybowen in New York.

I have a queasy feeling about the next 12 months, econonically speaking, and for the ad biz, too. Our industry generally lags a few months behind major economic happenings, but we feel it. What do you think?