14288: BMW Seeks POC.

AgenySpy posted that BMW launched a review for its U.S. multicultural business, and incumbent The Community won’t participate in the pitch. Earlier in the year, Goodby Silverstein & Partners won the White portion of the business, pissing off a bunch of competitors who felt dissed because the client failed to directly inform the losers that they lost. BMW ultimately responded to the complainers like the automaker has responded to the Rev. Jesse Jackson—that is, with cricket chirping in German. Whatever. Watch for Omnicom to offer minorities from its network to be second-class citizens cultural collaborators with GS&P.

Meanwhile, the AgencySpy post inspired a comment worth repeating: “As a former ad person, why don’t clients just put out RFPs asking who wants to work for free? And I worked on the account for US Hispanic [a decade ago.]” Hey, clients aren’t bold enough to ask minorities to work for free, opting to compensate with crumbs instead.

BMW Launches Review of U.S. Multicultural Business; AOR The Community to Sit It Out

By Patrick Coffee

BMW has launched a mandatory review of its U.S. multicultural advertising business, a spokesperson confirmed today.

Another party close to the matter stated that Miami’s The Community, which has served as AOR for the brand since 2015, declined to participate.

The client rep confirmed this to be true. The review will be run internally and will not involve consultancy Ryan Roth Hayes, which oversaw the main U.S. competition that initially launched last year.

You’ll recall that GS&P beat out Hill Holliday, Wieden + Kennedy, Droga5 and Anomaly to win the account.

As with that review, this one will be driven by a procurement department based in Munich as BMW looks to cut expenses, much like its competitor Volkswagen. Last year, multiple parties close to the business claimed that this was one of the main reasons incumbent KBS chose to opt out just like The Community has done.

BMW, which traditionally works with a wide variety of agencies, spent $275 million on paid media in the U.S. in 2016; it’s unclear exactly what portion of that total was dedicated to multicultural marketing.

A spokesperson for The Community declined to comment on the news.