17574: CFO CTO AIC CMO AOR WTF.

 

Advertising Age published a perspective on pitch decision-makers that opined CMOs are no longer running the review.

The person with the final vote includes Chief Financial Officer, Chief Technology Officer, and/or AI Chief. That’s too many chiefs with not enough Indigenous people, to twist an outdated phrase. Or too many kooks in the kitchen, to twist another phrase.

The author’s closing thought: “The agencies that win the next generation of AOR relationships won’t necessarily have the flashiest creative reel. They’ll be the ones who understood how the buying committee changed and showed up ready to meet every person in that room on their own terms.”

That’s a lot of asses to kiss—an exclusive club of clients to wine, dine, and pine over.

Not a stakeholder with hiring authority: Chief Diversity Officer.

The AOR review has left the CMO’s office

By Robyn Freye

In our last four pitches, the person truly running the room wasn’t a chief marketing officer. That’s new.

Throughout my career, I’ve had a front row seat to hundreds of agency pitches—from the vantage point of an agency leader, holding company chief growth officer and as a search consultant. For years, the participant list looked the same: a brand’s CMO, VPs of marketing, and a procurement lead who showed up at the end to negotiate terms.

As AI accelerates, that list has gotten a lot longer. The C-suite decision tree is rapidly expanding, to the point where marketing leaders are often not even the stakeholders leading the review.

In our pitches, we’ve engaged with chief financial officers asking about ROI and unit economics; chief technology officers asking about data architecture and model access; chief experience officers asking about loyalty and CRM; and increasingly, AI chiefs or center of excellence leaders asking questions no one on the agency side has a slide for. The marketing brief hasn’t disappeared, but it’s no longer the only scorecard agencies are being vetted against.

Tech and finance leaders are increasingly guiding the conversation

We are seeing three things converge at once.

Budgets tightened, and every function attached to spend now answers to finance earlier in the process, not after a recommendation is made. CFOs are piling into budget conversations sooner, rapidly followed by procurement and ops leads.

Agencies used to negotiate with marketing and settle commercial terms with procurement afterward. Now those conversations run in parallel, often before there’s even a brief to respond to.

AI turned the agency relationship into a technical one. Clients aren’t just asking: Can you build the campaign? They’re asking what happens to their data inside an agency’s stack, which models are being used, and who owns the output?

In one recent review, a CTO stopped the pitch mid-presentation to ask exactly where client data goes once it enters our AI workflows. Not as a gotcha, but because it was a genuine gap in what had been disclosed. That’s not a CMO’s question, and it’s not going away as AI gets more embedded into agency work.

Growth and marketing are board-level language now. Accountability for ROI is climbing every rung of the corporate ladder, which means more of the C-suite is getting in the room for the pitch, not reviewing it after the fact.

Agencies must put more skin in the game

Most agencies still build their pitch teams for a CMO audience. But a brilliant strategic idea, delivered by a strategist, a creative and a media lead, doesn’t answer a CFO’s question about cost-to-serve, and it definitely doesn’t answer a CTO’s question about where client data lives once it enters your systems. If those questions get asked and nobody credible in the room can respond, the review stalls right there, no matter how strong the campaign idea is.

This isn’t about padding the pitch team for theater. It’s about building literacy in margin, resourcing models, and ROI methodology, and bringing in technical experts who can speak plainly about security, data governance and how AI is actually being used inside your workflows.

Clients aren’t asking for a bigger show or another slide. They’re asking for someone in the room who can answer their actual business challenges.

The next generation of agency leaders won’t just be strategists and creatives who learned to talk numbers. Pitch teams will become commercially and technically fluent by design, as comfortable defending a margin structure or a data architecture as they are defending a creative concept. Agencies that are still hiring and promoting for one skill set are going to find themselves outnumbered in their own pitch room.

The modern AOR relationship is evolving

The buying committee has changed, and the agency model has to change with it. That’s why independent agencies are punching above their weight to win bigger assignments and credibly competing with holding companies and management consultancies.

They were built to adapt to this moment. When media, data, commerce, and creative sit inside one collective, there’s someone at the table who can actually own the answer when the CFO asks how spend maps to outcomes, or when the CTO asks how the data model works across disciplines. The answer can’t be “let me get back to you.”

There’s a harder version of this problem that nobody in the room is talking about yet: procurement processes move at the speed of contracts, and AI capability moves at the speed of deployment. The agency a brand selects today based on their current AI stack may look materially different in 12 months— tools change, models change, governance practices are still being written. Brands that are serious about this should be building flexibility into AOR agreements, like capability review triggers, structured check-ins tied to AI roadmap updates, and commercial terms that can flex as the relationship evolves.

The agencies that offer that language proactively will stand out. The ones that don’t will find it asked of them anyway.

The real shift isn’t that reviews got more crowded. It’s that the questions being asked have outgrown what a typical pitch team can credibly answer, and clients know it. They’re adding seats at the table because the risk of getting marketing, technology, and cost wrong is now something every member of the C-suite is personally accountable for. When a brand picks the wrong agency, it’s no longer just a marketing problem. It’s a balance sheet problem. It’s a Board conversation.

The agencies that win the next generation of AOR relationships won’t necessarily have the flashiest creative reel. They’ll be the ones who understood how the buying committee changed and showed up ready to meet every person in that room on their own terms.

17413: IBM Dumps BM On WPP.

 

Campaign reported Ogilvy is no longer the White advertising agency of record for IBM, ending a 32-year alliance.

 

That surely adversely affects WPP CEO Cindy Rose’s chances of collecting the full $19.1 million payout spotlighted in a previous post.

 

Looks like Rose couldn’t leverage any relationship connections from the IBM and Microsoft partnership.

 

It’s not a good sign for the White holding company—er, White single operating company—aspiring to be a trusted growth partner for clients in the era of AI.

 

IBM and Ogilvy end 32-year creative partnership

 

The WPP-owned agency has been the technology brand’s creative AOR since 1994.

 

By Luz Corona

 

Campaign has learned that WPP’s Ogilvy is no longer IBM’s creative agency of record after 32 years of partnership.

 

The partnership began in 1994 following IBM’s decision to consolidate its US $500 million advertising account with Ogilvy. Past campaigns include Solutions for a Small Planet, E-Business, Smarter Planet, Watson, Think and Let’s Create. IBM’s Smart Ideas for Smarter Cities campaign, created by Ogilvy France, won the Outdoor Grand Prix in 2013 at the Cannes Lions International Festival of Creativity. IBM also became the first B2B brand to be inducted as the corporate honoree into the Advertising Hall of Fame in 2022. The brand and agency commemorated the 30-year milestone in August 2024 with a celebration at the agency’s global headquarters at 3 World Trade Center.

 

“Ogilvy has made the decision not to participate in the upcoming creative RFP for IBM. We are immensely proud of our 32-year partnership, a tenure nearly unrivaled in this industry,” an Ogilvy spokesperson told Campaign in a statement. “Together, we have built one of the world’s most iconic brands through campaigns that defined eras of technological progress. While we have chosen not to move forward in this process, we celebrate our shared history and wish the IBM team continued success.”

 

According to a source with knowledge of the relationship, this was a business decision made because of longstanding balance-of-trade friction between WPP and IBM, rather than a reflection of the creative partnership. IBM previously held a media account review in December 2025. Incumbent WPP Media decided not to participate in the review.

 

The news follows WPP CEO Cindy Rose’s recent announcement to divide the holding company into four operating units — WPP Media, WPP Creative, WPP Production and WPP Enterprise Solutions. They will be led across four regions: North America, Latin America, EMEA and APAC. “We don’t want to be a holding company anymore,” Rose told Campaign in an interview after announcing the new three-year strategy, “Elevate28,” in a bid to stem its worsening revenue decline.

 

Campaign has reached out to IBM for comment.

15943: Walton Isaacson Increases Altitude With American Airlines.

Adweek reported that American Airlines elevated Walton Isaacson from multicultural agency to creative AOR. That’s like upgrading from coach to cockpit—or crumbs to cash.

 

American Airlines Chooses Walton Isaacson as Its Creative Agency of Record

 

The two first partnered on diversity in December and are still focused on inclusion

 

By Jason Notte

 

Amid Covid-19 curveballs in the winter and a turbulent summer in the skies, airlines have a lot of noise drowning out their day-to-day details and long-term plans.

 

As the travel industry dealt with an encroaching omicron variant during the 2021 holiday travel season, American Airlines named Walton Isaacson its multicultural agency of record. Attempting to “better connect with Black travelers,” the airline asked WI to develop campaigns, harness social influencers and create video content specifically for that purpose.

 

Yesterday, during an interview about the airline’s performance during a summer teeming with delays and cancellations, chief customer officer Alison Taylor revealed that Walton Isaacson was recently elevated to the airline’s creative agency of record. This decision ended a nearly seven-year relationship with previous creative agency of record Crispin Porter + Bogusky—and gave American its second creative AOR since completing a nearly 25-year relationship with McCann affiliate TM Advertising. According to research and data consultancy COMvergence, American Airlines spent $33.3 million on media in 2021—including $23.3 million on digital/online alone.

 

“Walton Isaacson is now actually our agency of note for all our marketing business, not just for our DEI,” Taylor said.

 

American first reached out to Walton Isaacson in 2021 to see what the agency was about and if it could help the airline reach and understand a more diverse base of travelers. In the wake of George Floyd’s murder and ensuing social justice protests in 2020, the airline formed a Community Council of seven Black business and community leaders. In one of their first acts, council members referred American to Walton Isaacson.

 

Walton Isaacson CEO Aaron Walton founded his agency with Cory Isaacson and Earvin “Magic” Johnson in 2005 and built a portfolio of brand partners including Lexus, McDonald’s and Bristol-Meyers Squibb. During its initial work with American, Walton Isaacson began establishing connections with one of the brand’s most underrepresented traveler demographics.

 

“American is looking for a collaborative partnership grounded in insightful and innovative cultural perspectives,” Walton told Adweek. “They sought an agency partner that shares this inclusive worldview and applies it in delivering best-in-class creative and communications.”

 

Inclusion on all levels

 

Dana Lawrence, American’s managing director of global brand marketing, admits that much of the brand’s advertising prior to 2021 “underindexed” Black passengers. It didn’t do much to include them or the airline’s Black employees in the company’s messaging.

 

That erasure has consequences. According to a 2021 report by MMGY Global entitled The Black Traveler: Insights, Opportunities & Priorities, Black travelers comprise 13.1% of the U.S. leisure travel market, despite representing 12.1% of the U.S. population in the 2020 Census. They spent $109.4 billion on travel alone in pre-pandemic 2019, but 70% said they are more likely to visit destinations and buy from brands in whose marketing they see themselves reflected.

 

“We look at our brand equity and brand health, and where we have the biggest opportunity is with Black travelers,” Lawrence said. “It wasn’t that we weren’t reaching them with our general market campaigns, but we needed to do it in a more authentic way that’s going to resonate with them more strongly.”

 

American is trying to back up its new marketing focus with stronger representation throughout its organization. It’s partnered with Black chefs and sommeliers in its lounges and inflight dining. It’s teamed with Essence and Blavity on both inflight entertainment and their connections to Black travelers. And it’s hired more Black directors and managers and partnered with historically Black colleges and universities to recruit more talent into the company.

 

Walton Isaacson’s tenure as American’s creative agency of record begins this week with a campaign entitled “Let There Be No Limits.” It focuses on the Black travel experience and how the industry has placed limits on passengers who view the world through a more expansive lens.

 

“Our vision for the partnership moving forward is to collaborate and tap into the power of diversity and culture so that American Airlines can truly live up to their promise of You Are Why We Fly,” Walton said. “Travelers of all backgrounds will see themselves reflected throughout their travel journey with American and distinguish the American Airlines brand from their competitors.”

14688: Laundry Service Wins Business To Partly Offset Papa John’s Loss.

Advertising Age reported Laundry Service was named AOR for the BodyArmor sports drink brand. No word if ex-client John Schnatter made a conference call to congratulate the White advertising agency.

Laundry Service Wins AOR Duties On BodyArmour Sports Drink

The brand goes with an AOR for the first time as it ramps up its challenge to Gatorade

By E.J. Schultz

Laundry Service has won creative agency-of-record duties for BodyArmor, a fast-growing sports drink brand that has been mounting a challenge to PepsiCo’s Gatorade. The agency, which won the account after a competitive review, will handle TV, digital, social and out-of-home with its first work expected in 2020. The selection marks the first time BodyArmor has used an AOR, according to a Laundry Service spokeswoman.

BodyArmor has marketed itself as a healthier alternative to Gatorade. Ads have featured pro athletes who are also investors, including Kobe Bryant, who has directed some of the brand’s recent ads. Coca-Cola Co. took an ownership stake in the brand last year. Endorsers include U.S. soccer star Megan Rapinoe, who appears in a new ad that debuted during the World Cup.

BodyArmor has also run ads using the tagline, “Thanks Gatorade, we’ll take it from here.”

14614: General Mills Run-Of-The-Mill Bullshit.

Advertising Age reported General Mills pulled AOR status from 72andSunny in a move designed to create a project-based model for the cereal maker. Maybe the White advertising agency should spend less time fabricating diversity playbooks and more time focusing on brand playbooks. Expect future shootouts on projects to feature lots of client-appeasing concepts starring Gracie.

General Mills strips 72andSunny of agency of record title

MDC Partners agency continues to work with brands including Cheerios alongside other roster shops

By Lindsay Rittenhouse

General Mills has stripped MDC Partners shop 72andSunny of its agency of record title as it shifts to a project-based model.

The agency, in partnership with Redscout, won lead U.S. creative duties in 2016 for some of the company’s larger brands including Cheerios, Nature Valley and Yoplait. People close to the situation told Ad Age that 72andSunny will continue to work on certain projects for Cheerios but that it was taken off the Yoplait and Nature Valley accounts.

“We do not have a creative agency of record,” a General Mills spokesman confirmed in an email to Ad Age. “We have a portfolio of agencies that our brands can use based on their current needs.”

The spokesman declined to comment further so it is unclear exactly when this change took effect.

A spokeswoman for 72andSunny declined to comment.

Independent agencies Erich & Kallman, Pereira O’Dell and Joan (which recently rebranded from Joan Creative) are also on General Mills’ roster, working with various of its brands on a project basis. Erich & Kallman, for example, produced a Gen Z-friendly ad for Reese’s Puffs in February that highlighted the woes of prom dress shopping.

Erich & Kallman, Pereira O’Dell and Joan were all selected to handle certain projects as a result of the larger 2016 creative review, as was indie shop The Community, which told Ad Age it has since parted ways with General Mills.

While 72andSunny categorized it as a restructuring move at the time, one person close to the situation said the agency’s layoffs in March, which trimmed five percent of its staff in New York and Los Angeles, may have been related to the loss of General Mills. The Los Angeles office had handled Cheerios and will continue to do so.

Losing AOR status on Cheerios surely comes as a blow to 72andSunny, which last year lost the Nissan Infiniti account; clients Coors Light and Johnnie Walker have been placed into review. The agency declined to defend Coors Light. Late last year, the shop lost MillerCoors’ Coors Banquet to Mekanism.

General Mills’ U.S. measured media spending declined 9.2 percent to $644 million in 2017, according to the Ad Age Datacenter. Cheerios’ 2017 spending fell 31.9 percent from 2018 to $99 million, Nature Valley’s grew 12.6 percent to $59.9 million and Yoplait’s was trimmed 43.2 percent to $59.9 million, Ad Age’s data shows.

14251: Papa John’s AOR WTF.

Adweek reported Papa John’s hired a fresh AOR—Endeavor Global Marketing —which has never served as an AOR. Oddly enough, the new shop is still probably an improvement over Laundry Service and Zimmerman Advertising. According to Adweek, the AOR selection—which did not involve former Chairman John Schnatter—came after a less-than-one-month-long pitch between three agencies. It’s likely that the average Papa John’s employee spends more time cooking a pizza than the competing firms spent cooking up presentation concepts. Oddly enough, the new campaign is still probably going to be an improvement over Schnatter shilling.

Embattled Papa John’s Hires Endeavor Global Marketing as Its New Agency of Record

New group CMO Bozoma Saint John led the effort

By Patrick Coffee

Pizza chain Papa John’s has turned to another ad agency to help the company move through its ongoing identity crisis.

The brand chose Endeavor Global Marketing, the creative division of the Endeavor “holding group” formed by Ari Emanuel’s media conglomerate WME | IMG late last year. That group also includes both WME and IMG along with such disparate entities as UFC, The Miss Universe Organization and Droga5 (in which it holds a minority stake).

Bozoma Saint John, who joined the umbrella organization as CMO earlier this summer after a year at Uber and officially started work this week, led the final pitch along with EGM president Ed Horne, evp Seth Matlins and executive creative director Ryan Wagman. The review launched less than one month ago, with EGM beating out two other unnamed agencies.

WME co-president and former ESPN executive Mark Shapiro has been a member of Papa John’s board of directors since 2011.

The company’s search for an AOR started after Adweek reported on a round of layoffs at Laundry Service, which won the account late last year. The following day, Forbes reported that company founder and chairman John Schnatter had used the N-word on a May media training call that also included unnamed agency employees. Schnatter later acknowledged using the word, but claimed it was taken out of context.

Forbes then published a longer story regarding the company’s “toxic culture” as Schnatter accused Laundry Service of “pressuring” him to use the word and later attempting to “extort” Papa John’s for $6 million. An internal memo from Laundry Service described those claims as “completely false.“

Now, Saint John said the brand must act quickly to redefine itself.

“This is a really pivotal moment not just for Papa John’s, but for all corporate businesses and all brands that service a larger group of people,” Saint John told Adweek. “Our culture has become even more sensitive to anything we feel is outside of our moral compass, and as a brand we acknowledge that.”

While EGM currently handles a variety of projects for clients such as Visa and T-Mobile, this news marks the first time it has been named creative AOR on a major brand. Saint John described the relationship as “more all-encompassing,” stating that the resulting work will “run the gamut” from traditional advertising to social media, public relations and “cultural help.”

Endeavor will begin working across all of Papa John’s channels immediately, with a full campaign set to debut in the fall.

“This isn’t an apology ad campaign,” she said. “It has to be cultural and deeply moving … the 120,000 employees of Papa John’s are not defined by one individual. How can we as EGM not just create a new narrative based on a value proposition, but convey what is truly inside Papa John’s?”

CEO Steve Ritchie acknowledged in a statement that the brand looks to reintroduce itself to the public.

“We met with the Endeavor Global Marketing team, led by Bozoma Saint John, Ed Horne and Seth Matlins, and they blew us away with their perspective, experience and creativity,” Ritchie said. “The brand is at a pivotal moment. We need to earn back the trust of the consumer and we need to demonstrate our commitment to being inclusive. We believe Endeavor Global Marketing is the right team to help us do that.”

A Papa John’s representative declined to elaborate beyond Ritchie’s quote, and neither the client nor its new agency named the other two shops involved in the review.

According to two parties with direct knowledge of the matter, executives at former AOR Grey recently reached out to Papa John’s regarding the possibility of resuming work on the brand. At least one member of the company’s board then reportedly attended a meeting in the agency’s New York headquarters last week.

A Grey spokesperson declined to comment.

Schnatter, who was not involved in the review process, has launched a legal campaign against the company he founded in 1984. Last week he filed a complaint alleging the board had not provided documents related to his resignation, which he previously called “a mistake.”

The Forbes story claimed that he hired a separate agency to make new ads starring himself after former CMO Brandon Rhoten was reportedly pushed out of the company when he suggested it move away from marketing campaigns featuring Schnatter.

A spokesperson for Publicis Groupe’s Fallon, which resigned the business after approximately one month along with Initiative and Olson Engage, said that the agency’s work was product-based and did not include any ads starring the founder. Those ads, if they do exist, have yet to run.

The board of directors also brought on Powell Tate, a public affairs division of IPG PR firm Weber Shandwick, earlier this summer.

“Powell Tate is working closely with a team of advisers, including Akin Gump, who are assisting Papa John’s as it takes the necessary steps to address the issues raised by recent events and move the company in a positive direction,” said the firm’s svp of business development Ellen DeMunter. “We are providing counsel and support to Papa John’s senior management to help them deliver on their commitment to take deliberate and meaningful action to improve its corporate culture.”

“With these types of things, you need to react quickly because the audience and the consumer needs to know where you stand,” said Saint John. “You can’t let this linger.”

Kantar Media’s latest numbers have Papa John’s spending more than $136 million on paid media in the U.S. in 2017 and $32.5 million during the first quarter of 2018.

10393: Translation Makes Advertising History.

Not sure what to make of the news that Translation won the entire Bud Light account. The shop has yet to create an advertisement on par with the classic Bud Light campaigns. Then again, mcgarrybowen was clearly unqualified to handle the challenge. So for now, Steve Stoute and Translation deserve praise for masterminding an unprecedented achievement. A Black-owned advertising agency has won AOR status on a major beer account.

10154: LatinWorks Hits The Jackpot.

From Advertising Age…

Hispanic Shop LatinWorks Wins AOR for Texas Lottery Account

As the Multicultural Population Becomes the Majority in More States, Is This a Sign of Things To Come?

By Laurel Wentz

As more of the population in America’s most multicultural states is increasingly non-white, future pitches may be geared toward reaching a market that is no longer divided between the general market and a minority population of different ethnicities.

In Texas, where 57% of the population is already multicultural, and mostly Hispanic, the Texas Lottery is awarding its entire account to Austin-based LatinWorks, which previously handled the Hispanic portion. The business is believed to be worth about $30 million.

When the Texas Lottery holds state-mandated agency reviews, agencies can pitch for pieces of the account, or as a group for the whole business. In the pitch just ended, LatinWorks pitched for the whole account with the support of small digital and media agencies.

More traditionally, incumbent TracyLocke is believed to have teamed up with Hispanic agency Lopez Negrete Communications and urban shop Sanders Wingo for the African-American portion.

“The other agencies came at it from a general-market angle and partnered with different multicultural agencies, with African-American experts and Hispanic experts,” said Christian Filli, LatinWorks’ VP of strategic planning. “We took a different approach. We have a different model, where we own the consumer insights, and rely on partners for different disciplines.”

As the winner, LatinWorks will be the lead agency, and work with Springbox to grow Texas Lottery’s digital presence, and the David Group to support LatinWorks’ in-house media planners.

“In certain markets like Texas where Hispanics are the majority, it makes sense that an agency with an understanding of that target across all levels of assimilation will be well positioned,” said Alejandro Ruelas, managing marketing and the agency’s CMO.

In Texas, for instance, the shift is accelerating, with more than 60% of the state’s population projected to be multicultural by 2016, Mr. Filli said.

In deciding to go for the whole account, rather than just the Hispanic portion, “It wasn’t from a place of ambition or arrogance, but understanding that’s where the state is going,” said Sergio Alcocer, LatinWorks’ president and chief creative officer.

He said the agency has handled non-Hispanic work before for clients such as Mars’ Skittles candy and Anheuser-Busch, but always on a project basis rather than as the agency of record.

“Our objective is not to be a general-market agency,” Mr. Alcocer said. “What we want is to bring the multicultural phenomenon to the mainstream in categories where it makes sense to lead with multicultural because that’s where the business opportunity is. It’s a formula of the past that only the general market can lead.”