JWT's Pool: 'This is not the second coming'

By Dave Lindorff

   Most of the media industry may be gaga over the AOL-Time Warner merger but not the entire media industry.
     Meet Jean D. Pool. She's big media, so to speak, as executive vice president  and director of North American media at J. Walter Thompson.
      Pool is not impressed.
    "This deal is not the second coming," says the blunt-spoken Pool.
     On the surface, she says the deal has a certain appeal. "It's a nice marriage because Time Warner hasn't been able to make the transition to the internet and AOL is there, and because Time Warner is a wonderful provider of content for AOL."
     But marriage wasn't called for, as Pool notes.
    "They could have gotten those things through agreements without a merger. "
       In the end, Pool doesn't see the merger as especially benefiting anyone--not AOL, not Time Warner, not advertisers and not the public.
     Most certainly not the public. "It's not important who owns what," she says. "What does the consumer care about that?"
     In Pool's view, all the breathlessness aside, what's really going to forever change the media landscape is not this merger and those that will follow but convergence technology. Convergence technology will merge the TV set and the computer as one, allowing television viewers to interact rather than simply sit and watch.
     What about all the breathless talk about the potential for cross-over media deals for advertisers?
      Like many media people, Pool is skeptical of the promises of cross-media efficiencies that inevitably follow announcements  of larger media mergers.
    Package deals, when they do emerge, invariably benefit the seller and not the buyer.
   "I don't think anyone has ever offered a package deal where the sum of the parts cost less than the separate parts," she says. 
 "Now it can be that sometimes there are strategic reasons you might want to do it, but in general, the rule is that if you buy all the stuff in a cross-media deal, they charge you more."
     Moreover, she argues, there's no reason to believe that such deals will be forthcoming when AOL takes over.
   "Time Warner already has TV, magazines, film and everything.  If they haven't been successful in offering cross-media deals with all that, what will AOL do for them? Nothing. That association won't make them any more successful at doing it."
    So what of the whole new world that some people say this merger is ushering in?
     She doesn't see one. "It certainly doesn't change anything for advertisers."
   And of the argument that advertisers will be more comfortable dealing with an internet company--AOL-- now that it's linked to a good old, familiar media company, Time Warner?
     She doesn't buy that one either. "Agencies and advertisers are getting quite comfortable with the internet," says Pool. 
   "We all have plenty of dot.com clients these days.  It's really kind of a quaint idea to say that there is some synergy between the old media and the new that will benefit advertisers."
    Far more critical, says Pool, is how the new company is brought together.
     "Before anyone can really say whether this merger is a brilliant stroke we'll have to see if there is brilliant management to make it work. We're going to have to see how it all shakes down when one person is really running the place."

-Dave Lindorff is a staff writer for Media Life.