One of the two or three events of public relations: What does it mean for Publicis to buy Ji Heng?

What does it mean for Publicis to buy Jiheng? From the top management of Jiheng, I have learned that Jiheng is going to go public in two or three years. It was not until yesterday that I saw the news that the facts changed faster than I expected-Jiheng, a China public relations company founded 13 years ago, was acquired by foreign investors. What surprised me was the speed at which Jiheng gave up listing and invested in foreign capital, not the merger itself. In fact, from a global perspective, the development of the public relations industry for decades is basically a road of mergers and acquisitions. As we all know, at present, the global public relations market is monopolized by four or five communication groups (the super-large communication organizations represented by similar foreign giants such as WPP and Omnico are all "company groups" with loose structure and thousands of single companies). ) and expand its scale in different markets around the world at an average rate of acquiring one or two public relations companies every week. Adequate capital support is its greatest advantage. However, domestic public relations enterprises are far from being able to compete with them in this respect. Even in China's local public relations market, it is difficult to compete with these international groups. At this time, as a local public relations company based on the cultural background of China, Jiheng is bound to face the insurmountable problem of single management and operation limit to some extent. If you want to have multinational customers and your own global organization network, you must further expand into multiple vertical industries, which is almost impossible for a company system to complete. However, if we want to jump from a single company to a multinational organization, we must use "capital leverage" to expand in the form of capital operation. This is a necessary condition for the growth of a "people-oriented" single public relations company. Therefore, integration with the international community, merger or listing has become a continuous trend. In this sense, in order to better integrate the resources in the domestic market and enter the international market, it is a correct choice to be merged by Publicis. Advantages and disadvantages of change Any change will have advantages and disadvantages, and so will the capital transaction between Publicis Group and Jiheng Group. Although all the advantages and disadvantages may not be clear in a short time, I personally only make the current analysis based on the existing information and thinking. First of all, we can look at it with a grateful attitude, that is, the factors that are favorable to Jiheng at present: First, this merger proves that Jiheng's team strength, professionalism and market operation ability have been affirmed by the management. In this respect, Ji Heng is superior to many China companies, including many top 20 local public relations companies. Second, this merger has expanded Hengheng's capital strength and laid a platform for developing multinational customers and overseas markets. Thirdly, in terms of customer resources, the integration of public relations and advertising with customers, all-round service, professionalism and cultural concepts, I believe that with the help of Publicis resources, Jiheng will have a favorable development. Secondly, in the era when capital is king, there may be hidden concerns when independent local public relations companies merge into foreign-funded groups: First, can the stability of the team be maintained for a long time? After thirteen years of hard work, Ji Heng has experienced ups and downs since he was a child. Nowadays, the company's culture, middle and senior management team and their work habits have basically taken shape and become stable. All of a sudden, the independent and self-financing Chinese company in everyone's mind was labeled as a foreign company and became a foreign subsidiary. I believe that most employees of Jiheng may be as surprised as those who are out of the news, and have indescribable uncertainty about the future. At this time, it takes some time for the leadership to stabilize the morale of the army and make most team members understand, support and agree with the company's major change decisions from the heart. But at present, I think that in this case, the decision-making level of Jiheng did not communicate well within the team, so that many middle and high-level employees actually got the news from the outside after the event and did not know it beforehand. I understand that Ji Heng's decision-maker may be based on the principle of confidentiality, and the whole story may be limited to one or two people. But as a bystander, I also think that Henderson's decision-making level does not respect employees' right to know when dealing with this matter. If such an important event as corporate identity change is involved, how to maintain the overall stability and unity of the team after corporate identity change without sufficient communication with employees in advance to gain understanding, support and recognition? Second, the habit of independent decision-making and independent operation has been disrupted. Judging from the news released so far, Ji Heng's team and homework help as a whole will remain stable, just with a different name. This is the result that both the management and China hope for, and it is inevitable in the transitional stage, but it is not a continuous normal state. With the deduction of market environment and time, it is bound to be a big question mark whether Jiheng can basically maintain independent decision-making and independent operation after the honeymoon period between management and China. Because, with the change of his name, Mr. Xiao Jun has become a foreign manager who owns the shares of Publicis, and he is no longer the business owner of Hengheng. Hengheng's development model and path will depend more on the interests of employers than the needs of China. Of course, the above analysis is just a statement. At present, we don't know the specific content of the agreement between the two parties, because the specific acquisition details have not been made public. However, it is still expected that the acquisition of Jiheng will set a successful cooperation precedent for the development of local public relations industry, and it is also expected that Jiheng with the support of employers will develop faster, bigger and better in the future.