CHICAGO: The former Draft direct marketing agency that began its illustrious career in the Windy City, only to be subsumed by Interpublic Group and merged earlier this year as senior partner with FCB, is set to have some of its business moved to a new spin-off agency to avoid client conflicts, according to an IPG announcement Monday.
Two key executives from the former Draft network -president/ceoYvonne Furth and chief creative officer Lor Gold - are named joint helmers of the new venture within IPG.
Announced the ailing holding company: "Interpublic is in the process of aligning certain assets, including Zipatoni and the Qwest and CVS business currently at DraftFCB, to create a new agency brand with a full-service, holistic offering.
"While details are still being finalized, we can confirm that Yvonne Furth and Lor Gold will be taking leadership roles at this new [quasi] independent agency."
The creation of a new unit as a solution to potential client conflicts was talked about when Draft and FCB merged earlier in the year - particularly because FCB counted Qwest and Motorola on its roster, whilst Draft worked for Verizon and Nokia.
Readers-between-the-lines have suggested that the spinoff was triggered by client threats to move elsewhere unless freed of the DraftFCB yoke.
DraftFCB is still reeling from the double-whammy of gaining then losing the $580 million Wal-Mart account within the space of seven weeks.
The reason? Seemingly because it took the client out to dinner!
Data sourced from AdWeek (USA); additional content by WARC staff
