The restructuring of the Campbell Ewald organization continued this week with a small number of layoffs focused on its production department.
A statement from CEO Jim Palmer:
“As we have evolved our offerings and created more comprehensive content marketing solutions for clients, we have been restructuring to assure an effective and efficient delivery at all points of the consumer journey. As such, today we have unfortunately parted ways with fewer than five members from our production group.”
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All of these staffers were based in Detroit. Various sources told us that some members of the creative and business management teams were also laid off, but Palmer’s quote contradicts that claim.
This move would seem to fit within a larger trend in which agencies cut their production budgets or, in the case of shops working with Kraft-Heinz, forfeit all related duties to the client to hold down overall marketing expenses. But it’s not clear whether a specific account brought this change about.
The news follows last month’s larger round of cross-department layoffs in Detroit, which were also framed as part of the restructuring and/or cost-cutting demanded by clients.
At the same time, the agency has scored several mid-size new business wins and made a series of executive hires in recent weeks, chief among them that of director of invention strategy Wojtek Szumowski.
Standard operating procedure, then?