2010 will be seen as the year of the negotiator

If there is a single word which will dominate the business in 2010, that word is ‘negotiation’.Last week, OMD was awarded the Unilever media account in China. According to sources, the incumbent agency, Mindshare, was willing to reduce their fee by 25% compared to the previous year. OMD, it seems, has agreed to take on the account at a price that is a whopping 33% lower than Mindshare’s fee of last year.That is the story of the next year in a nutshell.