Hasta La Creative!

More than a year ago, we let you know about Publicis Groupe’s plans to acquire Atlanta-based Moxie Interactive and merge it with Columbus, Ohio’s Engauge. It only took about six months for the union of the two shops under the Moxie umbrella to become official.

Now we hear that the staffing cuts directly related to that merger, preceded by tips about a “restructuring” in late July, took place yesterday. We’ve yet to receive a response from the agency, but these are the details provided by tipsters:

• The cuts affected 10 percent of Moxie’s total workforce
• Total firings include up to 47 employees
• Most of those who lost their jobs were former members of the Engauge team

No details on where these cuts occurred, though the July tips indicated that some managers would be leaving and even the moderately positive posts on the agency’s Glassdoor page do seem take some issue with “management structure.”

Updates when we receive them.

In unrelated news, something seems a little…off about the Twitter profile linked from Moxie’s homepage. Help us figure out what it is after the jump.

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We’ve received several tips over the past week or so about San Francisco agency DOJO.

First, we heard that former GS&P account lead Marty Wenzell, who joined DOJO  in July 2012 and most recently held the president/MD title, was out. Then we heard that the agency — founded in 2009 by veterans of SF shop Fancy — would cease to exist at the end of this month.

Way back in January, we did confirm that Chris Masse, the DOJO art director turned creative director, had departed.

We didn’t hear much more from the shop until last week, when we got our first tips about Wenzell. We reached out to the agency’s contact email but received no response — and yesterday the listed phone number stopped working.

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While we have yet to receive confirmation from any agency contacts, a steady stream of tips about some big (allegedly) pending changes at New York-based Publicis Kaplan Thaler has found its way to our inbox.

Here are the claims laid out in the tips we received, which started trickling in back in April after the agency laid off “less than 2 percent” of its staff:

• The agency’s three offices will consolidate into the location at 1675 Broadway
• A majority of the agency’s staff will move to that office by 2015 and the shift will be complete by 2016
• The resulting shop will drop the K and the T to go by the name “Publicis Worldwide New York”

Hints are not so specific on the staffing front. We hear mention of “potential departures” at the executive level, and more than one tipster claims that Publicis Worldwide International Creative Director Erik Vervroegen now “has his name on an office door.”

Again, we have not received an official response from anyone at PKT – but we were told to expect announcements this week or next.

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Three months ago we broke the news that Beth Ann Kaminkow, CEO of Dallas-based Omnicom shop TracyLocke, was leaving her position to serve as global CMO of shopping center company Westfield Group.

We heard nothing more on the subject until today, when we received a tip claiming that the agency had hired a new CEO: Hugh Boyle, global chief digital officer at Geometry Global Chicago.

Mr. Boyle is a hard man to find: he recently deleted his Twitter account, and all calls to his Chicago office went straight to voicemail. Neither TracyLocke in Dallas nor Omnicom’s corporate office in New York offered any assistance on the topic.

Some backstory: Mr. Boyle hails from the United Kingdom, and he spent more than eight years at Ogilvy Action in London after the agency acquired his former employer, Tarantula. In 2011 he was promoted to global head of digital at the Ogilvy shop, and just over a year ago he moved to the U.S. to accept the CDO position at Geometry.

Updates when we get them.

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We hear from a tipster today that the number of parties involved in the summer-long Infiniti pitch is down to two.

While no official statements have been released, rumor has it that CP+B and GS&P are the last shops standing.

One thing is certain: this has been an epic pitch. The review began way back in December 2013, and in May the company’s own director of marketing told AdAge that agencies chasing the account (which has been with TBWA for more than a decade) would “have their work cut out for them”. Another dream client, then.

In June, the pitch officially involved seven agencies, and July saw that number drop down to four: Anomaly, BBH, CP+B and GS&P. Our source claims that the first two shops are no longer in the running, that one of them voluntarily dropped out of the review, and that WPP still isn’t happy about the fact that it did not make the first list of finalists. That would mean that Omnicom could still retain its longtime client — and that it’s now competing against MDC rather than WPP or Publicis.

No matter who wins the pitch, the account will remain with TBWA until the end of the year.

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Here’s a juicy anonymous tip for you: Cadillac may be looking for a new AOR.

A few established facts: the company got a new CMO in January and a new president last month. Sales in the U.S. are down considerably, with Auto News reporting that the two new executives “saw the depth of their challenge on Wednesday when Cadillac reported an 18 percent plunge in August U.S. sales.”

More key details:

“The brand’s U.S. deliveries have slipped in five out of eight months this year in an overall market that has grown 5 percent.

To remedy that…the division is considering adding features such as heated seats to lower-level versions of the car to entice buyers next year and making ‘significant changes’ to the brand’s marketing in the first quarter.”

Campbell Ewald’s Rogue unit has been AOR for the brand for more than a year after a creative review that didn’t sit well with former AOR Fallon; Rogue hired Matthew Zelley to run creative on the account in July 2013. ICYMI, the brand’s “Poolside” spot also earned a spoof from Team Detroit back in March.

Again, this is an anonymous tip. But the numbers don’t look good for Cadillac, which seems like a prime candidate for a “rebranding.”

At the very least, we can expect the tone of its campaigns to change in 2015.

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To follow up on a story Adweek posted a whole three weeks ago (we know, we know), we did receive word today that TBWAChiat Day will officially no longer serve as the AOR for Infiniti after more than fifteen years.

In late June we heard that a total of seven agencies were chasing the account, and two weeks later sources told Adweek that CP+B, BBH, GS&P and Anomaly were the only ones left standing.

The company has apparently made its decision; this week TBWA employees received the internal memo indicating that the client would no longer be theirs effective September 1st.

On an interesting side note, General Motors poached Infiniti CEO Johan de Nysschen earlier this month in the middle of the review–a move that certainly disrupted the process a bit.

In other words, expect news on which agency won the business to arrive shortly. Updates as we receive them.

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This week we’ve received several tips regarding the Atlanta homebase of Moxie Interactive. We have no confirmation from the agency itself, but we can summarize the claims:

One tipster writes that the agency is preparing for a large-scale reorganization that may lead to layoffs focusing on the accounts side.

Another tipster tells us that these changes, driven by leaders of both the Atlanta and New York offices, were “shopped” to marquee client Verizon Wireless as a sort of strategic preview–and that the client then leaked the plans to staff.

That tipster calls the move “the worst-kept secret in Atlanta” (other than the fact that the Braves always choke in the post-season), writing that someone somewhere has seen “the plan” and that cuts, if they do occur, will be at the management level.

Whether these rumors turn out to be true or not, there have been changes at Moxie in recent months. You may recall that the agency merged with fellow Publicis shop Engauge back in March and that two ACDs made headlines (on this blog at least) in June by leaving to join 22squared.

Updates as they arrive.

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For more than 30 years, TBWA/Media Arts Lab has enjoyed one of the most prized advertising accounts on the planet. After reports from the New York Post et al. and that entity called “Madison Avenue”, agencies are salivating for a bite of the Apple.

The dirty laundry aired in the form of internal emails during the Samsung trial in April and the subsequent reports that Apple would create more of its own ads in-house may have had something to do with this latest development.

Moreover, word is that whichever outside firm may eventually work on the account will also answer to Jimmy Iovine, president and grand poobah of Beats headphones, BeatsMusic and all other things By Dre that were recently acquired by Apple.

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The tips have been pouring in this week, and they all tell of staffing changes at Razorfish North America.

Several tips claim that 20 to 25 staffers have been dismissed from the agency’s Chicago office alone.

Others report layoffs at the agency’s Atlanta and West Coast offices, listing the total of North American employees dismissed at 100.

On the plus side: one tipster claims that, while confirming the downsizing, the agency’s CEO also announced that employees will receive merit-based pay increases on August 1st.

To date, we have no confirmation from the agency itself. Updates as they arrive.

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