Now even the Herald Tribune is discussing the Wachovia / WPP Group plc / Ogilvy & Mather disaster
September 30, 2008
NEW YORK: It may go down in the annals of Madison Avenue as the shortest tenure on a big account…
Is how the story leads.. This was earlier reported on Tribble Ad Agency, Media Bistro, Parker and others.
The Article also points out the following:
The acquisition of Merrill Lynch by Bank of America may also result in agency changes if Bank of America decides to reassign campaigns for Merrill Lynch to the agencies that work for Bank of America.
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Home Depot floating it’s review to 6 ad agencies
September 30, 2008
AdWeek is reporting that a total of six agencies have made the short list for the Home Depot business. The agencies are: McCann Erickson in New York; Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulos in Boston; JWT in New York; Grey Global in New York; GSD&M Idea City in Austin, Texas; and Richards Group (who currently holds the account).
We hope the agency of record title for Home Depot lasts longer than 8 hours.
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Wachovia to Ogilvy : you were our agency of record for 8 hours total
September 29, 2008
In a truely “game over” statement, Wachovia has announced the suspension of the Ogilvy account. Meaning that Ogilvy had it for 8 business hours total before losing the account.
A total disaster, and hat-tip to Agency spy for getting Wachovia to state the fact publicly.
Mary Beth Navarro, SVP, Corporate Communications for Wachovia to Ogilvy : “In light of today’s announcement, Wachovia has paused the finalization of our agreement with Ogilvy. We will work closely with our Ogilvy partners and our future colleagues at Citigroup to determine the best way to support our brands and our businesses going forward.
Wonder what the dwarf thinks now?
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Prior we noted that WPP group plc had Wachovia for 7 hours.. it was actually 8
September 29, 2008
In one of the most comical issues to hit the advertising agency space in a long time, WPP group plc and Ogilvy & Mather (O&M) issued a press release stating that they landed Wachovia on Friday… but Monday.. the company was sold to Citibank .. we informed the public that they were under threat to be fired within 7 hours.. we were mistaken.. it appears that they will be losing the account in 8 business hours… (48 hours if you count the weekend)
Then hot off the presses Monday morning we read this release stating that Citibank has now purchased the distressed bank.
Wachovia claimed to have a 150 million dollar spend.. we don’t think that WPP got one penny of the that spend… we don’t even know for sure if WPP or Wachovia paid for that press release.
However Parker did note that the chances are WPP spent money trying to land the now non existent account (it’s it’s a Citibank division now).
The Citibank agency of record is Euro RSCG and their holding company is Havas… not WPP.. … like Havas is going to allow feeding of a competitor WPP in the mix..… They’ll sell a line that “it’s better to have it under one Havas theme and one brand for business” or something along those lines.. and WPP will lose the account.
ugly… really ugly…
Edit: as with all developing stories… there is more…
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Dwarf moves WPP to Ireland
September 28, 2008
Most of the time we think the Dwarf is off his rocker… however in this case… we would of done the same thing.
A dispute between business and the UK government over its tax treatment of multinationals is set to deepen this week when WPP group plc , the world’s second-largest advertising agency, announces plans to shift its British headquarters to Ireland.
WPP is expected to say it is moving its tax domicile from the UK because of the threat of a markedly higher British corporation tax bill. WPP would be the latest UK-based group to shift its domicile – or to consider doing so – because of complaints about the British tax system’s waning competitiveness.
Pretty interesting stuff overall…
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WPP / Ogilvy & Mather lands Wachovia for 7 hours
September 26, 2008
A few hours ago we reported that WPP / Ogilvy & Mather landed Wachovia as their advertising agency of record. Well we live in interesting time. It appears that they lost the account already… literally about 7 hours or so after the announcement Citibank is now discussing the purchase of Wachovia…
The Citibank agency of record is Euro RSCG their holding company is Havas… not WPP.. … like they are going to allow feeding of a competitor…
“We should brand all these new assets Citibank.. it’s good for business”
Of course that means that WPP / Ogilvy & Mather … has the account for … about 7 hours… before the company entered buyout talks.
There is an Update to this post.. as it’s official… Wachovia is officially sold… so the new O&M deal might of been a single press release ……
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HOUSE.GOV down
September 26, 2008
The official house.gov website has been down for several hours… and from what we are hearing.. it’s because a flood of Americans are writing to their congressman via the online contact form telling them that the bailout is an outrage …
Some have reported a “very slow load” whereas others have been reporting it completely down…. the website is literally flooded with taxpayers saying “no” to the bailout.
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WPP lands Wachovia - Wachovia now under alert for failure
September 26, 2008
The seizure of Washington Mutual Inc. (WM) is quickly becoming a problem for Wachovia Corp. (WB). After federal regulators on Thursday night seized the West Coast thrift and its bloated book of failing home loans, investors have trained their focus on Wachovia, which itself holds piles of risky mortgages. Full Story but in the same breath they are going to hand over a 150 million dollar campaign to WPP as Wachovia said it has awarded its nearly $150 million creative and media advertising account to a WPP Group team led by Ogilvy & Mather after a review. Full Story
So they are in risk of being seized by the feds, but handing 150 million to WPP and Ogilvy & Mather?
What type of idiots work there? Last time WPP touched a bank … Lehman Brothers closed shop… WPP lost a client.. It’s like their toxic debt…
Plus we don’t know where Wachovia is getting this money from…. their Credit Insurance costs just hit the roof… The cost of insuring the credit instruments at Wachovia (WB) got just a little pricier in the wake of the collapse of rival Washington Mutual and the government’s failure to reach an agreement on a bailout of the financial services business. How much pricier? Put it this way - what Wachovia paid $670,000 for yesterday costs nearly $3 million today. Or about three and a half times more.
WPP feels this is a valid client as well as Wachovia feeling this is a valid way to spend money at a time like this?
no wonder these two industries are screwed… it’s the blind leading the blind.
You would think that wachovia would choose a smaller agency and reduce it’s advertising budget to brace for impact… instead they are spending every.. single penny left.. and handing it to perhaps one of the most expensive agencies out there…
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Advertising Depression
September 26, 2008
Industry Vet, George Parker stated “as we all know, when Corporate America is “feeling the pain” and needs to improve the bottom line, the first place they look for slash and burn, is the ad budget. That’s the way it’s always been, that’s the way it will always be.” Hence we in advertising are feeling this first.. and with blunt force.
Already we had private discussions with several agencies regarding their client base… what we are hearing over and over again…. the client wants to cut spending.. the client reduced their marketing spend.. the client halted advertising… and the worst of them all… in one case we heard this.. can’t we just have you as our “agency of record” for press releases?
That question was asked from a fortune 1000 firm to a BDA … we were told this on the condition of anonymity… but we can say for a fact that one of the firms that had nearly a $35 million dollar spend last year.. has now opted to press releases, blogging, and an occasional youtube video as their total marketing campaign.. to “keep the appearance that advertising hasn’t really stopped”
In fact we were told that the youtube videos were to run only 30 seconds, to make them appear as if they were TV spots that the individual missed..
Trust us, we really want to tell you the name of the agency and the client…. but look around.. you’ll see that not that many firms run about that spend on measured media last year… look hard enough and you might make the right guess…
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Dedicated Hosting
September 25, 2008
In light of the current economic disaster unfolding in front of our very eyes. We are going to look at a new approach for advertising. It’s called a Dedicated Hosting account, a domain name and a good idea.
Let’s face it, this is a rough time.. more difficult than anyone can remember in recent times.
Advertising budgets are being slashed like there is no tomorrow. The only hold outs are the less expensive but higher ROI types of marketing such as SEO and SMO.
But the only way to take advantage of this would be a good creative idea that uses a mixture of blogging and other social media tools… and some standard SEO practices.
The total “hard costs” of such a low cost campaign… the price of the dedicated hosting account and a solid SEO / SMO firm to pull it off.
You are looking at the price of 1 page print ad in national magazine for an entire global campaign. The problem however is the “good idea” .. the concept is where the problem is… not the costs.
Some good ideas in recent times:
http://www.plentyoffish.com
This site is run by one guy.. Markus Frind, the owner of the free dating site PlentyOfFish.com has been pulling in $10,000 a day from Adsense back in 2006… and he did it mostly via SEO with a small amount of SEM and Affiliate marketing.
But that’s not an ad campaign.. that’s some guy making bank… well that’s correct…
But the idea was there… he built a brand with nothing.. other than a domain name.. and a dedicated hosting account….
The point we are trying to make is that advertising is going to change during this recession.. and you are going to start hearing the words Server, MySQL, PHP and sitemaps much more… because it’s really one of the only places where you can run a robust campaign with little resources…
You can use an ICANN registrar such as domain bank a dedicated hosting provider like INetU … you are on your own when it comes to the good idea however… the best bet would be to ask yourself, “I wish there was a website that did X” .. .whatever X is.. that is what you should be doing..
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