As we work to bring even more value to our audience, we’ve made important changes for those who receive Ad Age with our compliments. As of November 15, 2016 we will no longer be offering full digital access to AdAge.com. However, we will continue to send you our industry-leading print issues focused on providing you with what you need to know to succeed.

If you’d like to continue your unlimited access to AdAge.com, we invite you to become a paid subscriber. Get the news, insights and tools that help you stay on top of what’s next.

MACMANUS' VISIONARY WANTS TO SEE MEDIA UNITS MERGE BEFORE HE RETIRES: MICHAEL MOORE

Mike moore wants to close one last big deal before he retires from MacManus Group later this year. That deal would be huge: the merging of the media units of New York-based MacManus Group and Leo Burnett Co., Chicago, in various configurations around the world.

Talks are continuing, but it's anybody's guess whether the deal will actually happen. More important than the deal itself, Mr. Moore notes, is the strategy behind it. From the MacManus side, a lot of that strategy has emanated from Mr. Moore, exec VP-director of media development at MacManus.

STRATEGIC MERGER

"It's been my vision for quite awhile that you need to be, from a media perspective, increasingly global in scope and significant in volume in most places," says Mr. Moore, who will be 61 next month. "So we've been working on two fronts: media independence and dramatically increasing our scope and volume in a very short time frame. That requires a strategic merger or acquisition or some move like that. That has been the strategy I have been pursuing."

Mr. Moore has been with MacManus' D'Arcy Masius Benton & Bowles and its predecessor, Benton & Bowles for 37 years. He's never been flashy, preferring to stay in the background, a behind-the-scenes team builder. Before being named to his present post earlier this year, he was DMB&B's worldwide media director.

Drawing upon his international experience, he notes that in the U.S. clients are increasingly moving to the European model of a media agency-of-record separate from their creative shops.

"So now you have media as a business in and of itself, media independents I call them," Mr. Moore says. "From that you have defined media revenue. And you need to use that revenue not in general agency business, but to reinvest in media. If you don't, somebody else will, and you won't get media clients."

REINVESTING IN MEDIA

DMB&B was one of the first ad agencies to recognize the importance of reinvesting media monies in media, in 1993 when it formed TeleVest, New York. Mr. Moore is particularly proud of his part in the formation of that unit.

Mr. Moore also was instrumental in DMB&B getting -- and keeping -- the media planning chores for Coca-Cola Co.

Says Chuck Fruit, VP-director of media and presence marketing for Coca-Cola: "One of the big reason's D'Arcy got the assignment was Mike Moore. He continues to be a critical counselor on all our media concerns. Whenever we have a problem, he's No. 1 on our speed-dial."