“Despite a call by the world’s largest marketer to ‘reunite’ media and creative, don’t expect the world’s largest agency holding company to do that — at least not in the traditional way,” Joe Mandese writes in MediaPost.

The report qutoes WPP Chairman and CEO Martin Sorrell, speaking Thursday during a quarterly presentation to investors, saying: “I think it is very difficult to merge back creative agencies with media agencies to that extent, because there will always be an argument about who’s in control.”

Mandese adds: “Sorrell’s comment — which was made when Pivotal Research Group analyst Brian Wieser asked him to react to comments this week by P&G Global Marketing & Brand Growth Officer Marc Pritchard at the Association of National Advertisers’ annual media conference — reveals the power that media services agencies have gained in the decades since holding company unbundled media from creative.”

Sorrell is quoted saying: “Ironically, we may have come full circle again.” But he “maintained that in the near term it is up to the holding company — not its media, creative and other specialized operating units — to reintegrate the process for its clients,” Mandese writes.