New PHD lands C5 consultancy

New PHD has picked up a marketing consultancy role for Channel 5 and is looking for a high-profile broadcast director for its new TV buying department.

The news follows confirmation that Abbott Mead Vickers.BBDO is to acquire PHD (MW May 17).

PHD will be working with C5’s marketing director David Brook and sales director Nick Milligan as advisors on the overall poistioning of the channel. “It is not a media consultants role and will have nothing to do with media planning and buying,” says a source.

PHD worked for Brook in his previous job as marketing director of The Guardian. TMD Carat handles media planning and buying for C5.

New PHD, the name for the new company, will be formally an-nounced within a month when solicitors complete due diligence on the acquisition. It will be run by AMV vice chairman Ken New and PHD’s three managing partners, David Pattison, Nick Horswell and Jonathan Durden.

The company is to recruit a high-profile broadcast director to improve the new company’s buying credentials. AMV and PHD are credited for their creative planning rather than as tough negotiators.

New PHD will report to AMV’s chief executive Michael Baulk and will not be a subsidiary of AMV, the agency.

This will allow New PHD to continue working with other creative agencies. There will be no rump of media planners left in AMV.

The acquisition sounds the death knell for the full-service agency model – where creative and media sit under the same roof.

AMV has always been one of the UK agencies most committed to the full-service ideal. However, it has about 280m of creative billings and only 140m of media billings. Buying PHD is an admission that its media department is failing.

The acquisition also effectively stalls moves to merge media operations with sister Omnicom agency BMP DDB.

PHD’s desire to be bought – it has held talks with Lowe Howard- Spink and CIA Group among others in the past year – also illustrates the need for volume billings in order to succeed at the top of media buying and could lead the way for other consolidations.

There is ample evidence that other groups are ready to demerge their full-service facilities or else merge with a media independent.

LH-S is still seeking a media independent; WPP Group is widely expected to merge J Walter Thompson’s media department with sister agency Ogilvy & Mather’s The Network; while Young & Rubicam’s media department is poised to move into Mediapolis with Mediastar.

WCRS – which could yet join Mediapolis – and Leo Burnett remain the only major agencies that have made no moves to abandon the full-service model.