Hasta La Creative!

While Innocean officially declines to comment on staffing changes, we’ve received a steady stream of tips this week regarding Executive Producer Jamil Bardowell.

Seems that Bardowell, who joined Innocean as VP, Director of Integrated Production in 2012, is no longer with the agency.

Bardowell has an extensive agency background: before joining Innocean, he worked at WPP’s The Garage Team Mazda; previous roles include production duties at Deutsch, Saatchi & Saatchi and The Rumor Mill.

His name appears on campaigns as recent as this week’s Hyundai FIFA spot; we’ll let you know if we learn more.

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More than a month ago, AdWeek brought you news that national plush couch chain Ashley Furniture had launched a creative review.

Today we heard a couple of things from our sources about that review:

• Ft. Lauderdale’s Zimmerman, which served as the company’s AOR since 2009, is out

At least two parties remain standing:

• Atlanta-based 22squared
• Doner of Detroit

Since this isn’t a small account (Ashley is offering more than $50 million in yearly media spending), we expect to hear more on the review soon.

For context, in 2012 the chain chose Ryan Partnership as AOR for the launch of its spinoff chain, literally named “ZZZ’s by Ashley.”

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Nearly three years after officially joining Mullen as chief strategy officer, Kristen Cavallo is moving up the ranks according to those in the know on the Spy line. Word on the street is that Cavallo, who works out of Mullen’s Boston HQ, has been promoted to president of the agency (in her second stint).  As CSO at Mullen, has led planning, biz dev and analytics efforts for a range of clients including JetBlue, Google, Acura, Adidas and Zappos.

Prior to Mullen, Cavallo spent well over a decade at the Martin Agency, last serving as SVP/planning and development at said agency, where she led efforts for clients including Pizza Hut, Expedia, Wal-Mart, Coca-Cola and Miller. During her career, Cavallo has also worked on the planning side at the likes of Arnold Worldwide.

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There’s no official word as of yet, but a phone call or two tells us that Ken Burbary is no longer at Lowe Campbell Ewald, where he’s spent the last two years working out of the agency’s Detroit-area office as chief digital officer. The CDO gig was not Burbary’s first rodeo at what was then Campbell Ewald, where he originally spent nearly a decade in the late 90′s onwards and eventually served as SVP/chief technology officer. In between his two stints at LCE, Burbary served as VP/group director on the strategy/analytics side at Digitas. We’ll keep you posted when we find out more.

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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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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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This seems kind of odd considering the kudos DUMBO-based The Joey Company received for a Trojan campaign launched just a few months ago (above) from the likes of Buzzfeed  and Adweek, but we’ve received multiple tips over the last 24 hours that the brand has parted ways with the DUMBO-based agency. Inquiries to the Joey crew have been left unanswered and we really didn’t make any inroads either with Trojan parent company, Church & Dwight, which could only serve up this measly statement: “Church and Dwight does not comment on the status of our agency partners and the brands they work on.” We’ll keep checking on the matter as we’re also hearing that another client relationship may be on the rocks at Joey. As for C&D, along with Trojan, the company also houses brands including Arm & Hammer, Nair and Orajel.

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Razorfish hasn’t been the most communicative as of late, but we’re checking in on this as we’ve received multiple tips from various sources that the agency cut staff in it the central/SE region, specifically offices in Chicago, Austin and Atlanta. While we await some sort of comment/clarification, our spies tell us that approximately 25 staffers were affected across departments including some VPs. We’re hearing a certain major digital account loss in recent weeks might be to blame, but we’ll of course update as soon as we hear more. Stay tuned.

Update: Asked and received. Here’s a statement from Razorfish that maybe clarifies things: “As with all successful professional services organizations, we regularly adjust our staff levels and skills mix to align with current client needs. In keeping with that strategy, we did have to adjust staff levels in a few of our offices, which totals less than 2% of our North American staff. We will, however, continue to bring new talent and new capabilities into the agency to ensure we exceed client expectations.”

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Well, when a client “declines to comment,” one starts to wonder, but anyways, multiple sources have told us that Bank of New York Mellon “is going to put [its] entire account into review” according to folks on the Spy line. The BNY Mellon global creative biz has been handled by fellow Big Apple-based operation Doremus since fall 2011. From what we’ve been told, Doremus has “declined” to continue serving as global AOR on the BNY Mellon business, which at the time called for the agency to integrate the brand’s TV, print and digital advertising in the Americas, Europe, Middle East, Africa and Asia-Pacific.

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We first inquired about this two weeks ago when the tips came in and have yet to hear back, but there seem to have been some notable defections in recent times from West Studios. If the name doesn’t ring a bell, West is the San Francisco-based shop that was launched two years ago by former Apple global marketing communications head, Allison Johnson, and was initially co-funded by Twitter co-founder, Jack Dorsey (we’re being told that Dorsey has since distanced himself from the company). During its initial launch, West was headed up by Johnson, former Martin Agency GCD Keith Cartwright and Katalyst digital head, Sarah Ross.

Well, as tipsters have pointed out, the latter two are no longer at West and in fact Cartwright doesn’t even acknowledge his time at the operation on their LinkedIn profiles. Of course, these aren’t the only notable departures from the SF shop in recent months. Travis Britton, former Cutwater principal/ECD who joined West as chief experience officer last year, has parted ways as has COO, Amanda Kelso (former W+K ECD Todd Waterbury was also in the mix but is now of course serving in the same role at Target). And today, we’re hearing that a major client is on the outs with the shop. We’re putting in more inquiries to the rather secretive West Studios, and will try to clarify what the state of the union is as soon as we hear more.

New Career Opportunities Daily: The best jobs in media.