Bank Of America To Open Ad Work To More Agencies

Bank of America plans to end five years of having a single advertising holding company in charge of its marketing communications. The decision means, among other changes, that the company will seek a new agency to handle its media planning and buying assignment.

For the last two years, Bank of America, which spends an estimated $2.5 billion each year on worldwide advertising and marketing, worked almost exclusively with agencies owned by the Omnicom Group. For three years before that, the company worked predominantly with agencies owned by the Interpublic Group of Companies.

But Anne Finucane, chief marketing officer since March 2006, said today that she had decided that the holding-company model hasnt quite worked out the way it might have.

What works better is for us to choose the agencies, Ms. Finucane said in a telephone interview. Otherwise, she said, it limits our ability to align the best agencies and the resources for particular businesses.

Marketers that consolidate their accounts at a single holding company are typically seeking more effective campaigns as well as the cost savings that can come from placing eggs in a single basket. For instance, Ford Motor works almost exclusively with agencies owned by the WPP Group.

Other marketers, however, prefer to seek ideas from multiple agencies with different parents, on the theory that limiting interaction to a sole corporate source may prevent the best ideas from emerging. For example, General Motors, which had long worked mostly with Interpublic agencies, has also hired agencies owned by the Publicis Groupe along with independent agencies.

The first result of the decision by Bank of America, Ms. Finucane said, is that the company will soon place in review the media planning and buying duties for its account, which are now handled by an Omnicom media agency, Prometheus Media Services in Chicago.

The review, to be managed by a consultant, will be open to agencies owned by holding companies like Omnicom and Interpublic as well as to independent media agencies.

After that, Ms. Finucane said, she will ask BBDO Worldwide in New York, the Omnicom agency that is creating the current Bank of Opportunity consumer campaign, to take a role as the companys lead creative agency and then coordinate the assignments for other kinds of work rather than have the integration done by Omnicom.

Under that plan, Ms. Finucane said, BBDO could continue to work with sibling Omnicom agencies — like Rapp Collins, for direct marketing; Organic, for online marketing; and TPN, for promotions — or with agencies that are not part of Omnicom.

The decision by Bank of America to abandon the holding-company model came after several assignments were awarded to agencies outside Omnicom like iCrossing, an independent digital shop, and two agencies owned by Interpublic.

One is Hill, Holliday, Connors, Cosmopulos in Boston, which worked for Fleet Bank before it was acquired by Bank of America, and the other is Octagon, a sports-marketing agency.

Bank of America plans to further expand its relationship with Hill, Holliday, Ms. Finucane said, by awarding the agency a project for a corporate social-responsibility campaign.

The decision by Bank of America also came after another agency owned by Omnicom, TBWA/Chiat/Day, became the creative agency for Washington Mutual, a competitor of Bank of Americas.

Holding companies like Omnicom own multiple agencies to avoid conflicts, keeping walls between, say, accounts for competing car companies. But some marketers in competitive fields like fast food and financial services prefer their holding companies follow a rule of category exclusivity across all agencies.

Ms. Finucane worked at Hill, Holliday before joining Fleet in Boston and then became a Bank of America executive after the acquisition.

Asked if that influenced her decision to end the holding-company relationship with Omnicom, she replied, I evaluate an agencys value based on the work they do, rather than on ties to an agency that, she added, she left more than a decade ago.

A spokeswoman for Omnicom, Pat Sloan, and a spokesman for BBDO, Roy Elvove, referred inquiries to Bank of America.

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