Hooking up. Getting it on. The spark of something new. Turning “you and me” into “us.” Merging. Partnering. Seeing potential. Creating something bigger and better than the sum of its parts. It’s as natural as the birds and the bees and as potentially marvelous as the combination of Pfizer and Warner-Lambert. “The Urge to Merge: Birds Do It, Bees Do It … You Can, Too!” is an incredibly brief and non-academic introduction to mergers and partnerships — how great they are and why they sometimes go sideways. Whether you’re ready to leave your current marketing agency or have already split up, it’s good to know that a great partnership is out there waiting for you. Find out the potential pleasures and perils that await when you download “The Urge to Merge: Birds Do It, Bees Do It … You Can, Too!”

1. THE URGE
TO MERGE:
BIRDS DO IT,
BEES DO IT …
YOU CAN, TOO!

2. SOONER OR LATER, YOU’LL WANT TO
HOOK UP WITH A NEW MARKETING
AND ADVERTISING AGENCY.
It’s only natural.
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3. AS NATURAL AS THE BIRDS AND THE BEES …
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4. AS NATURAL AS COALESCENCE, THE
SCIENTIFIC PROCESS THAT ALLOWS
LIQUID MOLECULES TO MERGE, AND
LED TO THE INVENTION OF …
the lava lamp.
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5. SURE, BEFORE YOU CAN BOND WITH A
NEW AGENCY, YOU’VE GOT TO BREAK
UP WITH YOUR CURRENT AGENCY.
DON’T WORRY.
Great breakups have occurred since the
dawn of time, and with amazing outcomes.
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6. IN FACT, MAYBE YOU’RE READY TO
WRITE THAT DEAR JOHN LETTER AND
MOVE ON WITH YOUR LIFE.
Mergers, after all, are the stuff history is
made of.
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7. AND NOT JUST TO
CREATE LAVA LAMPS.
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8. THE LATE 19TH CENTURY:
THE RISE OF MONOPOLIES
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9. The first big horizontal mergers and
the creation of the first billion-dollar
megamerger:
Step 1.
U.S. Steel (founded by J. P. Morgan) merges with
Carnegie Steel (founded by Andrew Carnegie)
and Federal Steel (controlled by Morgan).
Step 2, 3,
Morgan eventually melds another 785 separate
steel-making operations into U.S. Steel.
ad infinitum.
The company eventually accounted for as much
as 75 percent of U.S. steel-making capacity.
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10. FAST-FORWARD A CENTURY OR SO ...
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11. DRUG-CRAZY, BABY
2000 — Pfizer buys fast-rising competitor
Warner-Lambert
Why? Warner-Lambert was on to a little
something called Lipitor
The result: the word’s second-largest drug
company (Lipitor became the top-selling
branded drug in the world)
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12. IT DOESN’T ALWAYS WORK OUT
If all mergers worked out as splendidly
as they did for J.P. Morgan and Pfizer:
1. We wouldn’t need divorce lawyers (not a totally
bad idea)
2. You wouldn’t need our little online guide,
Breaking Up: The Start of Something Great
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13. OMG! WHAT WAS AOL THINKING?
2000 — It’s the height of the Internet craze.
AOL pays $164.7 billion for media goliath
Time Warner.
The biggest merger in U.S. history ever
Billed as the definitive fusion of two worlds:
electronic and print media
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14. WHAT WENT WRONG? EVERYTHING.
Lack of synergy (“It’s not about you, really …”)
The dot-com bubble burst (the streets of Silicon
Valley, Boulder, Colo., and Austin were suddenly
awash with slightly used BMWs for sale)
Dial-up Internet access took a dive (yes, Virginia,
there was a time before Wi-Fi, routers, and highspeed modems)
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15. THE RESULT:
THE COMBINED AOL/
TIME WARNER TOOK A
$99 BILLION LOSS IN
2002. TODAY, THEY’RE
SEPARATE ENTITIES AGAIN.
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16. DON’T LET IT GO WRONG FOR YOU
Partner with an agency that’s already a great fit
for you, one that knows you the way J.P. Morgan
knew steel.
We’re passionately and exclusively dedicated to marketing and
advertising for enterprise software and services companies.
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17. Partner with an agency that’s reshaping B2B
marketing the way Pfizer changed the drug industry.
The Starr Conspiracy combines left-brain strategic, analytical
thinking with right-brain soul and creativity to develop work that
shatters marketing expectations in this space.
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18. Partner with an agency as unique every day,
for every client, as the lava lamp was when it
was invented by a British accountant (honest!)
in 1963.
HOOK UP WITH THE STARR CONSPIRACY.
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