It was announced on brand republic last week that Google and Publicis have been working closely together for the past year and plan to step up their alliance with a proposed staff swapping system which could see “possibly hundreds of Google employees” taking placements with the huge media giant. This strikes me as being slightly wrong, seen as Publicis owns Digitas, ZenithOptimedia, Zed and Starcom, all of whom work with the Google system for their clients, trying to get the best from paid and natural search results.
Surely there is something wrong with such an alliance which could potentially mean Google staff giving favourable treatment and inside information to agencies who operate in the search sphere, therefore giving them an advantage on the competition. And if they did, it surely gives the Publicis owned agencies an unfair advantage in their market place. Im sure the parties invovled are going to claim it is just to learn from each others strategies, processes procedures etc etc but theres has got to be more too it than that. Am I the only one who is worried by this?
Full article here