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.

10629: Discovered By Amusement Park.

Amusement Park Entertainment launched its first creation—a Kinect game for Intel and Microsoft called Discovered. Check out the details here and here. It’s almost as hot as Chanel Iman.

Photo credit: Seth Browarnik

9747: Microsoft’s Truth In Advertising.

To politely bash Google, Microsoft is running the ad above featuring the headline, “Putting people first.” Advertising Age just reported Microsoft canned 200 in its marketing department, including Chief Creative Officer Gayle Troberman. Putting people first indeed.

8781: Milking Microsoft’s Marketing Melodrama.

Adweek reported on the Microsoft account shifts shafting JWT, presenting a different scenario than other stories that claimed client-side changes prompted the moves. Indeed, Adweek seemed to dump the blame squarely on JWT’s doorstep, citing the 2010 departures of Ty Montague and Rosemarie Ryan as “a turning point in the relationship.” Wonder if Montague and Ryan viewed JWT as a
Burmese prison and couldn’t wait to escape. And maybe JWT CEO Bob Jeffrey was actually directing his “unfair and anger-inducing” comments toward the ex-JWT duo. Ryan insisted that the company she formed with Montague will not pick up Bing business—but perhaps they’ll get a cut of Skype. Whatever. In a previous post, MultiCultClassics suggested Microsoft should program Bing so that searches for “crybaby” yield a result featuring a picture of the JWT CEO. Appropriately enough, a Bing search of “JWT Bob Jeffrey” displays the image below among the top results.

8775: Microsoft Moves Make Men Moan.

Advertising Age reported on the Microsoft account shifts that allegedly resulted from executive changes on the client side. The advertising agency initially feeling adverse effects is JWT. According to Ad Age, JWT CEO Bob Jeffrey decried the Microsoft moves as “unfair and anger-inducing.” Boo-hoo, Bob. It’s a little silly, however, to whine about the situation. After all, executive changes leading to reassignments happen on both sides of the table. Did JWT seek Microsoft’s input when Ty Montague and Rosemarie Ryan left their agency positions? Additionally, executive changes allegedly also prompted the recent break-up between CP+B and Burger King. And guess who was the first person to suck up to BK officials in the hopes of pitching for the business? Bob Jeffrey. Sorry, but there are far more unjust maneuvers being executed on Madison Avenue versus client headquarters. For Jeffrey to express outrage is asinine, hypocritical and just plain pathetic. Microsoft should program Bing so that searches for “crybaby” yield a result featuring a picture of the JWT CEO.

What’s Behind Microsoft Shift? Marketing ‘Chaos’

Yanks Bing, Windows from JWT Amid CMO Transition, More Account Moves in the Offing

By Rupal Parekh

There’s an oft-reliable rule of thumb in adland that dictates watching for a change in ad-agency relationships three to six months after a company has installed a new chief marketing officer.

But when Microsoft yanked the Bing and Office accounts from JWT barely three weeks into new Chief Marketing Officer Chris Capossela’s tenure—and while longtime CMO Mich Mathews is transitioning her way out—the speed of the shift prompted questions about what was behind the move, coming at critical time for the tech giant’s consumer-marketing initiatives.

Microsoft last week was mum on the reason for the agency changes, which JWT CEO Bob Jeffrey decried as unfair and anger-inducing. And more are said to be on the way, particularly relating to Windows Mobile, which is handled by CPB. “Microsoft works with a number of agencies on a variety of projects,” said a spokeswoman in a statement. “Beyond that, we have nothing further to share. We’re not commenting on mobile at this time.”

The roster shakeup is worrying to Microsoft’s other agencies, who now fear their relationships are also on the line. But the bigger concern is that the shifts are coupled with a lack of consumer-marketing experience atop the corporate-marketing division at a time of challenges, from Microsoft’s failure to answer the iPad to its inability to create buzz for a mobile operating system that trails Apple, Google and RIM.

Like Ms. Mathews, Mr. Capossela is a Microsoft lifer. The onetime speech assistant to Bill Gates was previously responsible for marketing business-to-business products such as Microsoft Office and Visio. While he’s said to be shifting into the CMO role, Ms. Mathews is technically still at the company and won’t be leaving until summer.

A top exec at one of Microsoft’s agencies described the marketing suite as in a state of “chaos” right now.

Said a person within the company: “These are big jobs at really important times for Microsoft and you have a business-marketing guy running consumer marketing at a time when Google and Apple are kicking our asses.”

(Several people whom Ad Age spoke to noted there’s a similar transition atop the ad-sales division, as Frank Holland, a longtime supply-chain executive, was last month named corporate VP-advertising and online business. Mr. Holland is a virtual unknown in the advertising and marketing world.)

While JWT was fired from the Bing account, the numbers suggest its advertising for the search engine, which it handled since May 2009, has been successful. Since then, Microsoft’s share of search has shot up from 8% of the overall market to 14%, according to ComScore, and it appears to be taking share from Yahoo and AOL.

The Bing move came just weeks before former JWT chief creative Ty Montague’s noncompete contract is set to run out and many suspected that the business, or at least a portion of it, would head to Co Collective, the shop that Mr. Montague and former North American Rosemarie Ryan founded last year. The pair were critical in JWT’s winning the business before they left to launch their own venture a year ago. But despite earlier ties to Microsoft and a recent hiring spree, Ms. Ryan insisted to Ad Age that rumors Bing work would land at Co’s door were simply not true. For its part, Microsoft said it has appointed Interpublic Group of Cos.’ Deutsch to take on the Office work, while CPB will create the next wave of Bing work.

The losses of Bing—valued at $116 billion alone—and Office reduce JWT’s status on Microsoft’s roster from one of the largest to one of the smallest, with just a couple of bits of business in China and Brazil, and will likely lead to layoffs. The agency declined to comment on how many staff could be affected.

When Ad Age asked who JWT believes was behind its dismissal, Jeremy Postaer, the JWT executive creative director on the Bing work, said: “That’s like asking who’s the guy that shot Osama. … Who really knows?”

8722: Drowsy Driving While Black.

As a follow-up to the previous post, check out Mercedes-Benz’s attempt at diversity. The old White guy in the extended commercial was replaced by an old Black guy in the re-edited version. It’s sorta the opposite of what Microsoft pulled in Poland.

8132: KKKinect? Nah!

Playing games with the news in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• Consumer Reports insists that Kinect—the new motion-sensing game from Microsoft—is not racist. A video game website claimed that testing showed Kinect has trouble recognizing users with darker skin. But Consumer Reports said the problems are related to low-level lighting versus the players’ skin color. So the game is not racist. However, some people still think Microsoft might be.

• Despite last month’s addition of 151,000 jobs nationwide, the unemployment rate remains stuck at 9.6 percent. Seems like the statisticians counting up all the numbers aren’t doing their jobs right.

• Starbucks wants to can the deal whereby Kraft distributed bagged Starbucks coffee to supermarkets and other food retailers. Now both companies are arguing over the agreement and how it might be nixed. Perhaps the corporate wonks should meet over a cup of high-priced coffee.

8103: Microsoft Multicultural Mistake.

…the winning advantage of a diverse team…? Oops.

7074: Overreaction Of The Week.

A visitor took exception to MultiCultClassics’ observation on the racial/ethnic makeup of the judges for The Big Ad Gig. But it is worth noting that a major sponsor of the event is Microsoft. MultiCultClassics originally defended the company during the recent Polish Photoshop® scandal. Maybe the support was premature, as the judging panel—like the Microsoft Polish Website image—is seemingly devoid of Blacks or Latinos (Memo to Anonymous: Please realize “seemingly” is inserted to avoid presuming too much about the individuals based on photos and short bios). Also like the Polish Website image, a judge of apparent Asian descent was permitted to participate. Perhaps Microsoft will see this post and insert a Black dude into the judging picture.

7070: The Big Ad Gig Lacks A Big Idea.

If The Big Ad Gig is supposed to draw hot creative talent, why does all the imagery appear to be a tired and contrived rip-off of The Apprentice? And what’s with the predominately White judging panel? That’s right, kids. You have the once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to create clichés while being criticized by Caucasians. Why, it’s just like the real advertising industry!

7046: Another Microsoft Polish Joke.

MultiCultClassics continues to believe Microsoft received overly harsh criticism for its recent Poland Photoshop® fiasco—yet could not resist messing with this lame diversity ad appearing in the latest issue of Black Enterprise. The probable Poland version is below.

7041: Microsoft’s Polish Joke.

Microsoft is catching heat over some Photoshop® bungling involving Websites in the U.S. and Poland. As the images depict, the U.S. version shows a stereotypical diverse office grouping, while the version from Poland replaced the Black dude’s head with a White guy’s head.

Folks are calling it outrageous, racist and worse.


Um, not really.

The truth is, it’s a standard example of multicultural marketing. Granted, the execution is clumsy and amateurish. And it doesn’t help that they replaced the Black guy. But Microsoft is simply doing what nearly every major advertiser does: Presenting people that will be most relevant and appealing to the intended audience.

If we’re going to go after Microsoft, let’s be prepared to take our grievances to McDonald’s, Burger King, Coca-Cola, Pepsi, Procter & Gamble, Unilever, State Farm, Allstate, Kraft, Quaker Oats, General Motors, Ford, Toyota, etc.

Need a quick example to demonstrate the point? Check out Colgate here and here.

Sorry, but offense should be reserved for the blatantly offensive. Like Draftfcb, Omnicom, CP+B and more. There’s a difference between displaying cultural cluelessness, racism, misogyny, homophobia, ageism and other forms of gross insensitivity versus just being cheap.

6363: Tossing Cookies.

Cooking up the news in a MultiCultClassics Monologue…

• A Greenwich Village bakery cooked up controversy by creating “Drunken Negro Face” cookies to honor President Barack Obama on Martin Luther King, Jr. Day. The place received numerous complaints from folks in the community. “I’m sorry that people were offended by the cookie,” said the owner. “We were just trying to make a large number of people happy, and instead we made a large number of people confused and angry.” The bakery is—you guessed it—French..

• First Lady Michelle Obama dissed the new dolls fashioned after her daughters. “We believe it is inappropriate to use young, private citizens for marketing purposes,” stated a White House spokeswoman. Now toymaker Ty Incorporated is backpedaling, claiming the dolls—named “Sweet Sasha” and “Marvelous Malia” are not representing the Obama girls. Ty is fucking lying, pardon our French.

• Harley-Davidson announced plans to fire 1,100 workers, citing the bad economy. “We reduced our production levels prudently in 2008, helping our dealers achieve lower inventory levels,” said the chief executive, “and we’re going to show similar discipline in 2009.” Either that or introduce the Obamotorcycle.

• Toyota officially passed General Motors as the world’s biggest automaker. GM’s only chance to regain dominance would involve introducing the Obamobile.

• Microsoft deleted 1,400 workers, and plans to trash up to 5,000 jobs in the next 18 months—firing employees for the first time in its history. Folks were told to clean out their Microsoft Offices and, oh, never mind.