Jan 28

We Hear: Is Brian Wallace Out at Motorola?

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Brian-Wallace We’ve reached out to the Motorola camp on multiple tries and haven’t succeeded but sources tell that Brian Wallace, who joined the Google-owned company barely a year ago, is no longer there. Here is one of several comments we’ve received: “Razorfish took on Motorola when Brian Wallace went there, while still working on Samsung. They did the Motorola work under the name Digitas (and still are).  Media planning/buying is being done by the real Digitas (NYC office) but the rest is Razorfish Chicago and Austin. Some key individuals were working on both at the same time [names redacted]. Samsung was not happy about this. Legal got involved. Went on for a while; Razorfish knew that Samsung would wind down the biz and move on, and it was so.”

Oy, if you recall, Wallace’s relationship with Razorfish dates back a few years, during the time he worked at RIM and served as VP/global digital marketing and media for the latter brand. Prior to his most recent gig, Wallace served in a similar VP/strategic marketing role at Samsung.

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Dec 11

Here’s More on Samsung/Motorola/Razorfish

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samsungfish

Yeesh, this story will not cease, and the tipster onslaught continues. To add a little bit more color if you will to yesterday’s story about Samsung/Razorfish/Motorola, we’ve got this word from a source in the know. We forgot to mention that Brian Wallace‘s relationship with the agency extends back to his Blackberry days at RIM, where he spent well over a decade and last served as VP/global digital marketing and media.

Once again, we will keep the other parties’ involved name redacted but we have received several tips about this. Here’s the first allegation: “I was part of the Denuo team on Samsung. The only firewall was that we worked on different floors. In many cases, Blackberry people would pitch in on the Samsung work. [Redacted] knew, his former employer didn’t. I heard the same thing happened again with Motorola (I still have buddies there).”

Along with being told that this was “common practice” at the agency, we’ve been told that employees have not only been given two business cards in order to promote both the GS4 and the Moto X “within days of each other,” From what we’ve heard from those in the know it was one card for Razorfish and the other at fellow Publicis Groupe-based shop, Digitas/Denuo. These tips are getting too numerous to accumulate. If you recall, Samsung just hired Razorfish over a year ago to work as the brand’s digital AOR.

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Dec 10

We Hear: Is This Why Samsung Parted Ways with Razorfish?

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samsunggalaxynote

You might recall that over the summer, Samsung moved its U.S. digital business from Razorfish to R/GA and now, all of a sudden, we’ve been filled with tips possibly about the reason why. According to sources familiar with the matter, there were conflicts of interest at hand. We hear senior execs on Razorfish’s mobile biz (we won’t name names at this point as we’re still checking on things) had also pursued the relaunch of Motorola–a direct competitor–not too long after head Samsung marketer Brian Wallace , who we’ve been told brought on Publicis Groupe-owned Razorfish to its roster while he was the former company, left for a similar role at Motorola late last year.

The kicker is that our sources say that Razorfish worked as fellow Publicis Groupe digital agency Denuo in order to maintain the Samsung biz and technically handled both Samsung and Motorola at the same time, hence the boot. Oy vey, it sounds like a mess and we’re looking into it, though our sources in the know actually worked on the account but we’ll try to get some more info on the matter. Feel free to chime in below.

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