The best laid plans of agency holding companies can come unstuck with the appointment of a new CMO and WPP finds itself in the embarrassing position of being supplanted on the Starbucks US creative account just months after seeming to win all the coffee giant’s agency business.
Stagwell’s Anomaly, which participated in the original pitch, has been awarded the business by new CMO Tressie Lieberman who joined days after the outcome of the original review was announced, an odd way to run such a pitch. WPP’s line-up included VML, Ogilvy and Landor.
Starbucks says: “At Starbucks, we believe it’s time for us to tell our story again. In doing so, we will maintain relationships with many talented agencies to help communicate our commitment to the craft of coffee and create an environment that connects us. We are grateful to our agency partners who join our incredible Starbucks teams on this journey of getting back to Starbucks.”
WPP pioneered bespoke agencies in the Martin Sorrell era and has worked for Ford on such a basis for decades although it no longer handles creative. Other relationships didn’t turn out so happily, most notably with Dell Computer and bespoke WPP agency Enfatico, which didn’t seem to produce anything before the account shuffled back to Y&R (now VML.)
The marketing community seems split between execs who like the idea of one big company handling all their marcoms – more convenient and cheaper (presumably) than using a roster of agencies – and those who want to source the best creative from wherever. Often these days that isn’t a holding company agency.
Stagwell is a holding company too (albeit much smaller than WPP) but its creative agencies, notably Anomaly and 72andSunny, are seeming to thrive. Anomaly is also something of a Super Bowl specialist, for AB InBev among others. It will be interesting to see if a Super Bowl spot is one of the factors in Starbucks’ thinking.
