Omnicom ousts O&M from £60m Motorola business

Motorola has handed Omnicom its $100m (&£57m) global advertising business, ending months of speculation about the handset manufacturer’s agency arrangements.

The news finally ends Ogilvy & Mather Worldwide’s five-year hold on the main account, although the WPP agency and 180 Amsterdam, which worked on the launch of the Pebl handset last year (<I>MW</I> May 12, 2005), may work with Motorola in certain territories.

The company will work with a number of Omnicom agencies including BBDO New York, Abbott Mead Vickers.BBDO, Goodby, Silverstein & Partners and Siegel & Gale. BBDO New York will act as the “central co-ordinating agency”. The mobile giant has been shifting business out of O&M on a project basis over the past year but has maintained it is still its global agency of record.

As well as 180 winning the Pebl launch, BBDO New York handled creative duties on its Rokr phone and AMV launched the Slvr. AMV also beat O&M and TBWA last month to win a &£40m pan-European task to adapt work from around the world for the European market.

Motorola’s former marketing chief Geoffrey Frost began to rethink the company’s agency arrangements before his death in November. He told <I>Marketing Week</I> in an exclusive interview last year that he did not believe in the traditional agency model, and instead preferred to work with a mixture of shops to get the best creative work (<I>MW</I> November 3, 2005). The process was continued by his successor George Neill, who appointed Omnicom.