Six Flags' Bankruptcy Debts: Graphics Shop Owed $71K; Mindshare $59K; Ogilvy Gets Off Lightly

Six Flags has stiffed Roto Graphic Printing Inc. for nearly $71,000 in unpaid bills, according to this list of the bankrupt amusement park's top 20 creditors. Media buyer Mindshare is owed $59,000. Missing from the list -- meaning it is owed less than $33,000 -- is Ogilvy & Mather, Six Flags' creative agency.

Six Flags filed Chapter 11 in U.S. Bankruptcy Court in Wilmington, Del., June 13, according to Bloomberg. It listing assets of $3 billion and debt of $2.4 billion. (Tribble suggested that this is bad news for Zimmerman and Omnicom, its parent. However, the account moved from Zimmerman to Ogilvy about a year and a half ago.)

The filing would suggest that Ogilvy, which did a bunch of interactive work for Six Flags, (see here also) has escaped mostly untouched from the bankruptcy.

One might ask, why is Six Flags dealing directly with its print/graphics shop and not paying its bills through Ogilvy? Clients sometimes do this to avoid paying needless agency middleman markups, or to make sure that they, not their agency, receive any volume discounts on offer. UPDATE: The client confirms that it does contract directly with Roto Graphic through one of its parks. The other, more cynical, potential explanation is that Six Flags' bankruptcy was such a long time coming, and so expected by Ogilvy, that the agencies made sure that Six Flags paid them before incurring any vendor debts. That theory would explain why these debts are so small even though the account, at $75 million a year at one point, is quite large. UPDATE: The client confirmed that Six Flags does pay for its media upfront. Perhaps "sequential liability" isn't such a dead issue, after all.