Hasta La Creative!

Perhaps our sources were right back in January when telling us that iShares was fairly press-shy, as it took nearly two months for the exchange-traded funds company, owned by investment management firm BlackRock, to at least officially divulge that it’s reunited with Ogilvy–specifically OgilvyOne–on its relationship marketing business. We reported in January, though, that OgilvyOne had already been working on this portion of the business, which was handled since 2009 by MRM, for some time, but had taken over the U.S. account in full.

No clarification on this yet, but the parties involved tell us that the RM portion of the iShares account (McCann previously handled the actual brand advertising) was actually not up for pitch. Anyhow, BlackRock’s global CMO Raj Seshadri has finally spoken out about the Ogilvy appointment (to be led by the San Francisco office) and here’s her statement: ” “At iShares, we believe that every investor is unique. Therefore each investor deserves a tailored suite of products and a personal experience that meets their individual needs. That’s why we are so excited to work with OgilvyOne – the team impressed us with their ideas, passion and the quality of the creative. They’ve developed not just great direct marketing ideas, but simply great business ideas.”

Update: Quick clarification on the matter. We’ve been told by those in the know that Ogilvy proper has actually been working on the brand advertising for iShares, previously handled by McCann, since January 2012. On the relationship marketing front, OgilvyOne won the business in December of last year but didn’t officially start work on it until March 1.

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