Three days after WPP won deal, Wachovia bank went bustNEW YORK: It may go down in the annals of Madison Avenue as the shortest tenure on a big account.
Three days after awarding a team of agencies owned by the WPP Group its creative and media assignments, Wachovia suspended the decision. The team was to be led by the flagship New York office of Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide.
The reason for the “never mind” was an announcement on Monday morning that Citigroup would acquire the banking operations of Wachovia. That will most likely eliminate the need for the WPP agencies because Citigroup has its own agencies, which include the Publicis Worldwide unit of the Publicis Groupe and Mediaedge:cia, part of WPP.
“In light of today’s announcement,” a spokeswoman for Wachovia, Mary Beth Navarro, said on Monday in an e-mail message, referring to the deal with Citigroup, “Wachovia has paused the finalisation of our agreement with Ogilvy.”
“We will work closely with our Ogilvy partners and our future colleagues at Citigroup to determine the best way to support our brands and our business going forward,” the statement concluded.
A spokeswoman for Ogilvy New York, Toni Lee, said the agency did not have anything to add to the statement from Wachovia, which is based in Charlotte, N.C.
Wachovia’s announcement on Friday ended a review that began in May. The review had been narrowed to the team led by Ogilvy New York and a team led by another WPP agency, Y&R.
Ogilvy New York was to take on the creative duties for Wachovia that had been handled by the Winston-Salem, North Carolina office of Mullen, part of the Interpublic Group of Cos. The Maxum unit of WPP was to become the Wachovia agency for media planning and buying, replacing the Boston office of Carat, part of the Aegis Group.
And Wachovia was to have worked with other WPP agencies for digital marketing and to create direct-mail campaigns to promote credit cards.
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