Wal-Mart Drops Newly Hired Ad Agency

[Omaha Steve]

http://money.excite.com/jsp/nw/nwdt_rt_top.jsp?news_id=ap-d8lsa4bg1&

Wal-Mart Drops Newly Hired Ad Agency

Thursday December 7, 6:21 PM EST

NEW YORK (AP) — Wal-Mart Stores Inc. has dropped its newly hired ad agency Interpublic Group of Cos.' DraftFCB, following the departure of a top marketing executive that helped lead Wal-Mart's switch to the new agency.

Wal-Mart's spokeswoman Mona Williams said that the decision was "the result of new information that we have obtained over the past few weeks." She declined to discuss further the new information. She added that Wal-Mart notified DraftFCB Thursday morning and is reopening the bid process for its advertising account, which is worth more than a half a billion dollars.

Philippe Krakowsky, Interpublic's executive vice president of strategy and corporate relations, at Interpublic Group, said "we are disappointed to hear of the decision." He declined to comment further.

The news, reported on Adage.com Thursday, followed Wal-Mart's announcement earlier this week that Julie Roehm, senior vice president of marketing communications, had left the company after less than a year on the job. Another marketing executive, Sean Womack, vice president of communications architecture, left at the same time. Womack was hired this spring and reported to Roehm.

FULL story at link.

[Lucky Luciano]

1. Yea...I noticed this today...

I saw IPG's stock take a big plunge around 130pm or 200pm and I said, "WTF?!" Then I looked on my Bloomberg terminal to find the news - there it was....IPG's credit got smacked a touch as well. WMT was 1% of their total revenues, but people smacked the stock hard because the company was having issues and the CEO of IPG was seen as helping IPG to dig out of their problems...this was unexpected and the stock tanked hard. To be honest, I would not mind seeing their credit get smacked even harder tomorrow :evilgrin:

[C_U_L8R]

2. This is hilarious stuff !!!!

Howard Draft is an loathsome oinker who just got caught
in a game of inappropriate gratuities with a marketing director
who was overly impressed with his "Aston Martin".

There's lots we don't know about this story... but it's pretty juicy.
Walmart was right to shitcan the Marketing Director AND the Agency.
Too much hankypanky.
Hilarious !!!

[Lucky Luciano]

3. ahhhhhh.....that is what it is....

I was wondering what revelation WMT made in the last couple weeks - it was not disclosed in any article I saw. It would not surprise me if this was the reasoning. They canned the marketing director too and hinted at shadiness...

[C_U_L8R]

4. Today's NYTimes tells more...

http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/08/business/media/08adco.html?ref=media

It keeps getting better !!!