"Omnicom agencies have recently been forced to change their email addresses to omc.com. Despite being experts in long-term brand building, agencies' own brands are being diminished and devalued by the very overlords for whom this expertise generates profit. The change has been explained to employees internally as a means of "simplifying our IT systems and making things run more smoothly.""
"This has been accompanied by a decision to restrict employees' use of Google services, including Drive, Slides and Docs, to be replaced by Microsoft's equivalents, including PowerPoint and SharePoint. It's difficult to imagine this decision being made by anyone who spends their working days and evenings creating presentations or collaborating on live documents. Or that they consulted anyone who has done so in the past 15 years."
"The term comes from the time of the British rule of India, where the British government wanted to tackle the high number of venomous cobras in Delhi. Their strategy was to offer a bounty for every dead cobra, incentivizing the public to kill the snakes and bring them in as proof. The scheme appeared successful initially, but the number of dead snakes kept rising. They soon discovered that enterprising people had started breeding cobra snakes to get the bounty."
Agencies were required to adopt omc.com email addresses, diminishing individual agency brands and identity. Employee access to Google Drive, Slides and Docs was restricted and replaced with Microsoft PowerPoint and SharePoint. The stated rationale was simplified IT systems and greater security for agencies and clients. The imposed change disrupted familiar collaboration workflows used daily by creatives and teams. The implementation produced unintended consequences analogous to the "cobra effect," where incentives and top-down mandates generate perverse outcomes that worsen the original problem and hinder progress.
Read at The Drum
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