Hasta La Creative!

Shoemaker Mizuno is currently conducting an agency review.

The Japanese footwear brand, which went from Shine to McKinney almost exactly three years ago, will not be renewing its contract with the Durham-based agency when it expires at the end of February.

A McKinney spokesperson writes:

We can confirm that McKinney is ending its partnership with Mizuno and it was a great run with five Effies, a WARC Prize for Social Strategy and Most Effective Brand in North America. Mizuno is a challenger brand with limited resources and we couldn’t be prouder to have produced such  groundbreaking work. We are actively pursuing a number of other, larger scale opportunities.

McKinney’s most recent campaign for Mizuno was “What If Everybody Ran,” which included the brand’s first-ever US TV spot along with a corresponding webpage and social media push; the project earned coverage in The New York Times.

A source told us several weeks ago, however, that the client wants its marketing strategy to focus less on video ads moving forward — a sentiment that fits with McKinney’s statement regarding budgetary concerns.

We know that Mizuno is currently involved in an (unannounced) agency review, but our sources did not list the shops competing for the account and the client has not responded to multiple requests for comment.

Updates as we receive them.