Hasta La Creative!

As our readers know, Hyundai’s Innocean has made moves to address the lawsuit filed against the agency and its chief creative officer Eric Springer since Adweek first broke the news last week.

On Friday, we reported that the office held an all-staff meeting to discuss the matter, allegedly averting a threatened walkout by an unspecified number of employees who were unhappy with the way management had dealt with the situation.

Monday, the agency’s representatives officially confirmed that Springer had been placed on leave pending the results of an investigation that reportedly involves an unnamed third-party consultant.

According to two sources with direct knowledge of the matter, leadership held another all-staff meeting at the end of the day Monday to discuss the news:

• First, CEO Steve Jun talked about Springer’s absence and Innocean’s decision to hire The 3% Conference to undergo that organization’s certification process.
• VP of creative resources Jill Pool then announced that Bob Rayburn and Barney Goldberg would take over leadership on the Genesis and Hyundai corporate business, respectively, in Springer’s absence.
• SVP of business development Angela Zepeda later told employees that “big changes for women in the agency are on the way,” referring to 3% and other unspecified efforts.
• Jun reportedly ended the meeting with a statement about making Innocean a “safe space” and protecting both the agency and its leadership.

We reached out to 3% founder Kat Gordon, who provided the following statement:

“3% is thrilled to have Innocean as the latest agency to undergo our certification process. While 3% Certified highlights leadership among those who pass, it’s also a deeply powerful and diagnostic inquiry for any agency that wants to do better. We believe that real change only happens when agencies do the hard work of a deep assessment of their entire culture and has a customized action plan to create a workplace where everyone feels treasured, not tolerated. 3% Certification is exactly that.”

Current employees tell us that some of their concerns have yet to be addressed. Specifically, they do not understand why they were not made aware of the suit before the news broke and do not know what happened to former HR director Sepa Sete, who is no longer with the agency.

More than 24 hours ago, we reached out to Innocean’s representatives with specific questions about the meeting, the new roles for Rayburn and Goldberg, the comments allegedly made by Jun, Pool and Zepeda and employees’ speculation on the other matters. We also reached out to Rayburn and Goldberg regarding their new roles.

We have yet to receive a response to those messages, but will update this story when we do.

In further news, public documents also reveal a second harassment suit filed by a Catherine A. Bennett last fall that named Innocean as a defendant.

Updates to come.

Today Adweek broke the news that Kimberly-Clark, the personal-care monolith behind everything from Huggies to Kleenex to Kotex, launched a global creative review in early January.

That’s a big one for WPP, whose agencies have long handled the vast majority of the company’s marketing business in the U.S. and abroad. The lineup includes Ogilvy, JWT, VML, VSA Partners and probably a few more.

According to a spokesperson, the client is “assessing the current agency landscape for creative services,” which means it’s looking to restructure its international agency lineup.

This doesn’t necessarily mean consolidation with one network. Back in 2015, the company’s old CMO told AdAge that he would rather go for an “Uber-style” agency of choice model that sounds a lot like a jump ball pitch.

It’s not quite clear what K-C wants to do in terms of agency structure, but the company has already cut its spend with WPP over the past year-plus, so we have to believe it has savings on the brain like its chief rivals Unilever and P&G. One month ago, the company also announced plans to cut some 5,000 jobs and close factories around the world, attributing the move to a desire to be “leaner, stronger and faster.”

At this time we don’t know who, exactly, is pitching against Team WPP, because PRs at all the major holding groups declined to comment.

Multiple sources do tell us, however, that this review is especially critical for Ogilvy and JWT. And while the former remains in all-hands-on-deck defense mode with an international, multi-office pitch led by one Tham Khai Meng, JWT has already been eliminated—at least in the U.S.

The agency worked on Kleenex and various Family Care brands while Ogilvy had Huggies, Pull-Ups, Kotex, etc.

More to come on this review, which arrives at a particularly sensitive for WPP after stock prices took their biggest dip in almost two decades yesterday.

[Image via]

In case you missed it, banking brand Wells Fargo has taken something of a beating in the arena of public opinion due to a scandal involving millions of fake savings and checking accounts created by employees in response to alleged performance pressures.

Earlier this month, the Federal Reserve also punished the company by effectively restricting its ability to grow until it makes changes to its board of directors.

And just this week, Senator Elizabeth Warren chided the company’s relatively new CEO Tim Sloan for admitting that the company had “charged nearly 600,000 customers for auto insurance they didn’t need,” “improperly charged 110,000 customers fees to extend their mortgage rate locks,” and “bungled its reimbursements to the auto loan and mortgage rate lock customers.”

This was all after the fake account issue had seemingly been resolved.

Now, we hear that the company is turning to a familiar party for help: its ad agency of record, BBDO San Francisco.

According to our sources, the shop plans to launch a new campaign with “a multi-million dollar budget” that is specifically designed to improve the bank’s reputation after more than a years’ worth of bad headlines.

Since winning the account in early 2014 (it had been with DDB for nearly 20 years), BBDO has indeed produced some surprising efforts. Its first campaign, for example, starred a real-life lesbian couple learning sign language before a touching last-minute reveal about their plans to adopt a deaf girl also played by a real-life deaf girl.

Regarding this post, a BBDO spokesperson referred us back to the client for comment. Wells Fargo representatives wrote, “We typically launch a new brand campaign every year in the Spring.  Currently, we are working through the details of our 2018 plans.”

So it’s unclear exactly how the agency will attempt to address the issues that its client has faced over the past year-plus. How would you do it?

T-Mobile ran a gentle message of equality for its Super Bowl LII ad, narrated by Kerry Washington and set to a cover of Nirvana‘s “All Apologies.”

The 60-second spot, which was created in-house and ran during the third quarter, was a notable shift in tone from the brand’ previous Super Bowl efforts. As it turns out, T-Mobile may have had something far different in mind.

The Wall Street Journal cited a TMZ report that the brand had reached out to former White House communications director Anthony Scaramucci about appearing in its Super Bowl ad before dropping the idea.

A source told AgencySpy that the brand had planned to to run a Super Bowl ad with Scaramucci and former White House press secretary Sean Spicer. When the plans fell through, the source claims, T-Mobile switched gears dramatically, wrote the new ad in-house and shot it around ten days before the Super Bowl.

It’s unclear at what point in the process this happened or whether TMZ’s other assertion—that the ad was centered around “Scaramucci at a podium fielding questions about T-Mobile, and whenever someone had their information wrong he’d scream, ‘Fake news!!!’”—has any validity.

Still, we’d all like to imagine the Spicer/Scaramucci spot that could have been. And we can say that neither of T-Mobile’s main agencies, Mother and Publicis Seattle, had anything to do with the ad that eventually aired.

We reached out to T-Mobile for comment today but have yet to receive a response.

In December, home improvement giant Lowe’s confirmed that it would be the latest retailer to break with tradition in abandoning the traditional agency of record model.

That news came in the form of a creative review that launched after Lowe’s parted with its CMO and moved its media buying business from OMD to Starcom, thereby ending an exclusive 12-year relationship with Omnicom.

This review, however, is unique in several ways.

Lowe’s is hardly the first client eager to keep its options open on the agency front. But according to three parties with direct knowledge of the matter, the current review is organized by region, with three separate pitches involving agencies in the Northeast, Southeast and Midwest portions of the United States. (Lowe’s is based in Mooresville, North Carolina.)

Each pitch involves three finalists competing to be Lowe’s creative agency for their respective regions. Our sources say the process is now in its last stages, with final presentations occurring last week.

Moving forward, Lowe’s will retain all three winners, maintaining the equivalent of an open-format business relationship with each. In other words, the different shops could simultaneously work on different and potentially complimentary projects. According to our sources, major projects will also follow a “jump ball” round in which the three agencies will pitch against one another.

All factors strongly indicate that spending concerns helped shape this approach, with earlier reports stating that Lowe’s looks to move away from major TV and print work in order to focus more heavily on digital campaigns.

But this not a standard consolidation effort in which a major client moves all work to a single holding group. When news of the review first broke, a BBDO representative confirmed that the agency would be defending its business. According to our sources, IPG’s Ep.+Co, sister agency to Hill Holliday, is also competing in the Southeastern pitch.

A BBDO representative deferred to the client for further comment, and an Ep+Co. spokesperson declined to comment. Lowe’s also declined to elaborate on the review, and the full list of agencies involved is unclear at this time.

All of our sources, however, agree that the winners should be announced in coming weeks.

Yesterday, incumbent KBS confirmed many suspicions and officially ended its relationship with longtime staple client BMW after more than a decade.

In an all-staff email, CEO Guy Hayward didn’t really explain why. But we have some pretty good ideas…

Now, two very reliable sources tell us the final 5 have been chosen, and they’re ready to pitch:

• Droga5
• Wieden+Kennedy
• Goodby Silverstein & Partners
• Anomaly
• Hill Holliday

Bit of an all-over-the-map roundup here, but we do have some of the best big-name agencies around competing for our favorite fancy car brand.

Back in October, we learned that the client would be making the expected, procurement-led review official. Around the same time, BMW ended its relationship with social media agency Laundry Service and moved that work to Critical Mass, which had been handling its web design for a year.

Laundry Service would probably say that’s because they were getting ready to start working on creative director Matthew McConaughey’s favorite auto brand.

A BMW representative declined to comment—as did reps for both Hill Holliday and GS&P. But the former is looking for a win as Dunkin’ Donuts threatens to part ways with both the Donuts in its name and its longtime agency of record thanks to one Tony Weisman, CMO extraordinaire.

None of the other agencies have responded. Roth Ryan Hayes, the consultancy running the review, had also not responded to our email by the time this post went live.

More to come. KBS will continue working on the BMW account through next June.

As we all know, the relationship between agencies and production companies is something of a “can’t live with them, can’t launch our own full-service unit” sort of thing.

And it may be getting a bit more tense as clients tighten their budgets.

Specifically, one source claims that certain unnamed agencies have been asking production partners to work on their biggest campaigns of the year for free.

This party, who has a long history in the agency world, told us that agencies have approached production companies regarding their upcoming Super Bowl campaigns with an unusual request: front us the work and we will pay you later.

Details remain somewhat sparse, but the claim is there’s an understanding that production companies will get the money they’re owed for the work … at some point. One source speculates that this movement stems, in part, from clients moving toward 120-day billing terms at a time when agency profit margins are growing slimmer and agencies simply don’t have the money to pay for the work until the client gets their fees to them. Grey reportedly quit the Coty account for this very reason.

According to several parties who’ve discussed the matter with us, production work is now the most—if not the only—profitable department at many agencies. And this narrative is very similar to tales from the Department of Justice’s ongoing investigation into the practice of “bid rigging” by which large agencies divert such work to their own in-house studios. In those cases, the shops allegedly do this while promising that they will steer project toward the same production companies at some future date in exchange for participation in a rigged bidding process.

Then, of course, there’s the matter of actors unions accusing holding group production units of finding ways to avoid casting union talent in campaigns.

A veteran of the production company world tell us that this sort of thing has happened in the past, but never for a project as big-budget or high-profile as a Super Bowl campaign.

In one such incident, an agency allegedly sent its production company a spec spot project, stating that they would only get paid if the client chose to run the ad (they did).

We’ve reached out to multiple parties regarding this latest claim. The anonymous tip box is on the right.

In case you missed it (we really hope you didn’t), The Weinstein Company is in deep trouble.

In less than a week, Harvey Weinstein went from the king of faux art house cinema to a pariah fired from his own company for multiple allegations of sexual harassment and, as of today, sexual assault.

Now, two parties tell us that the company has reached out to more than one major creative agency for a potential rebranding project.

The details remain somewhat fuzzy as no one has been willing to discuss the matter on the record, but the reason behind it is quite obvious: any and all things associated with Harvey Weinstein are now pure poison.

This won’t be your standard “refresh” assignment. According to our sources, the winning agency will be tasked with developing a new name and logo for whatever The Weinstein Company will eventually become. Unfortunately, the group cannot get rid of its origin story.

Now the question is, which agencies might these be? The most obvious answers would come from the WPP family, given the fact that Martin Sorrell’s network has invested in Weinstein since 2005 and includes quite a few potential shops.

Today a spokesperson declined to comment on those rumors for an Adweek story regarding the fact that EVP Lance Maerov is currently one of four remaining members of Weinstein’s board of directors.

The Weinstein Company itself has not responded to a related query.

In case you missed it (you almost certainly didn’t), Papa John’s has launched a creative agency review with extra toppings—its first since 2014, when Grey won the business away from Zimmerman.

AdAge broke the news yesterday, almost exactly three and a half months after former Wendy’s vp of advertising Brandon Rhoten joined the company as its new CMO. Like clockwork, he alerted “10 agencies and holding companies” with the goal of ending the review later this year and starting a “new creative vision” for the pizza chain.

Rhoten implied that Grey could retain the business as long as it sticks to “the new expectations” but also emphasized a desire to name an agency partner with capabilities that go beyond “traditional” creative. Perhaps he has heard that Grey has its own post-production studio.

Today a client spokesperson said that he cannot reveal which agencies are involved, adding, “We need a creative AOR that can help Papa John’s stand out in the commoditized pizza category and make clear Papa John’s commitment to better pizza. All in a world where more than 60 percent of our domestic sales come from digital channels.”

In short, Papa John’s wants to compete against Domino’s by focusing more on digital delivery orders, social media and stunts like the kind that CP+B has been dreaming up for a decade or so. They really missed out on the emoji ordering and the self-driving cars.

Now we hear that Sir Martin Sorrell really wants to keep the account, which makes some sense as Papa John’s generally spends between $100 and $150 million on paid media in the U.S. each year. He is purportedly in the process of arranging one of his famous cross-agency teams to pitch the business, though it’s not clear at this time which shops will contribute beyond the incumbent.

A spokesperson for Grey deferred to the client for comment, and WPP corporate PR hasn’t gotten back to us.

On a related note, we find it kind of interesting that Papa John’s likes to publicize the finalists in its creative reviews. Or at least it did back in the halcyon days of 2013. Anyway, something tells us Peyton Manning isn’t going anywhere.

[Pic via]

Macy’s is in talks with Ogilvy regarding its advertising business, according to two sources with knowledge of the matter.

Ogilvy representatives deferred to the client for comment this week. A Macy’s spokesperson wrote, “We are always assessing our options to identify the best partner for the Macy’s brand.”

According to our sources, however, the talks are ongoing and Ogilvy New York looks to “take on” the Macy’s business. This would be different from recent moves by the classic retailer, which has long eschewed an agency of record in favor of hiring shops on a per-project basis for work usually focused on the holiday sales season.

The most recent RFP, issued in late 2015, ended with Macy’s picking BBH and Figliulo&Partners for campaigns which included a tribute to the famous Thanksgiving Day Parade by the former agency’s New York office. This followed a split between Macy’s and former creative partner JWT after more than a decade. At the time, the client declined to comment on whether the decision to stop working with that agency had anything to do with the Erin Johnson/Gustavo Martinez case, which had been making headlines for several weeks at that point.

BBH declined to comment on its relationship with Macy’s today, but more than one party told us it did not work with the company beyond the 2016 holiday effort. A Figliulo&Partners representative had not yet responded to our email when this post went live, though recent reports stated that the agency has continued to work on the account in some capacity into this summer.

Last April, CMO Martine Reardon stepped down to be replaced by Richard Lennox of Toys ‘R Us, who then announced plans to lead a turnaround by focusing on digital, closing stores and reducing staff. BBDO veteran Jim Reath joined Macy’s as its new SVP of marketing this May after running the Lowe’s account for several years.

Despite its well-publicized struggles, Macy’s remains a huge advertiser. The company spent nearly $600 million on U.S. measured media in 2016 according to Kantar Media, and its holiday ads are some of the retail sector’s most-watched each year.